Location, location, location:
Alberta street is pretty much art galleries, little boutiques, a few venues and a LOT of great food: this place is in walking distance of all of it.
Pine State Biscuits is a place we've hit the last few times visiting family. It's pretty busy on weekends, but there's barely a line during the week - solid biscuits, meat and veggie gravy options and other southern fare. The Alberta Co-op grocery store is steps away if you want to make food at home too. For the folks looking for some, um, herbal relaxation, it's like two buildings down from a soon to be opened dispensary (right now, the next closest is about 6 blocks away).
Transportation:
Wanna go anywhere else in the city? Get on the bus -it goes directly downtown. You can also get on the bus going North/South on MLK. It intersects with MAX, plenty of other lines, and leads to all sorts of interesting neighborhoods. Ridesharing is pretty smooth. There are all kinds of wacky rental scooters and bikes you can grab via app, but we didn't try them.
The Place:
One of our group has mild mobility issues, so accessibility is important! There are two shallow steps leading up to the front door, then 18 steeper steps up to the actual apartment. There is one rail along the flight. From the apartment level, there's another similar flight of steps to the roof deck.
This place has air conditioning! Portland summers can get pretty sizzling, so we were very thankful to have it!
The place is decorated very cute, and is quite comfortable.
During the day, you can sometimes hear the music from either the gym below or the neighbors next door, but it's not very intrusive. The nice folks running the place provide earplugs and a white noise generator just in case. We did not need to use either.