It's a puzzle to many people why it costs quite so much money to live in Oregon - especially when the two most basic amenities - which you'll know by now we're counting as housing and food - are less than $20K between them. That's higher than the national average, but still not high enough to explain why there's so much more money required on top of that.
Perhaps we should blame the hipsters! They've settled in Portland, and turned it into an almost-European haven of coffee shops, real-ale breweries, and counter-culture. It's certainly not lack of space to live that's pushing prices up - this state has more eerie 'ghost towns' than any other American state, and so there should be plenty of cheap options available. Nowhere is the landscape more dramatic than it is here - you get forests and beaches right next to each other.