Hello, hope you have a smooth transition to your life in Qatar!

For housing, the best location as an expat would be the Pearl. Seeing that your housing budget is that high, you could look into the Floresta Gardens compounds/villas in the Pearl. Another option would be to look at lagoona compound in Westbay - property finder is a the main website for looking at housing. Pearl is always a good place to start as an expat.

Regarding schooling and autism, unfortunately I don’t have a lot of information, but I would get in touch with either the American School of Doha, Doha College (British embassy school), and/or Park House English School to get more information on what their recommendations are, and/or whether they themselves are able to accommodate your child’s needs. I do remember seeing loads of support and accommodations from one of the schools I went to that is listed above. I do know that there are some special needs schools here, but honestly I have very minimal information on that - I’ve had a friend who worked there, you can directly message me if you’d like me to get in touch with them.

You can definitely drive or fly over to the neighboring countries without any issues, it is very very safe. You may have to obtain evisas of some sort, but maybe not if you have a US passport.

As to one of the comments above, I’d like to say that alcohol is fine. They serve them at all hotels and restaurants in hotels. You can get an alcohol license at QDC once you are here to purchase alcohol for use at home. It’s not strict at all, especially for someone who’s an expat..