I manage an urban permaculture farm in Portland and rent rooms (and soon a yurt!!) very inexpensively via Airbnb.com (a home stay site where you support the locals instead of the hotel chains!!) Might I suggest utilizing something like this to keep costs down? (I know that there are other permie and urban farm hosts on there as well that may even be interested in some sort of barter or trade....!) Some great resources for setting up events in Portland are below, I'd be happy to assist in organizing any Portland events or sleeping arrangements!!
http://www.meetup.com/Portland-Permaculture-Meetup
http://vbc.cityrepair.org/ - Village Building Convergence - 12th annual 10 day community building event through permaculture and natural building May 25 - June 5
http://tryonfarm.org/ - Urban 7 acre Permaculture Eco-Village
http://columbiaecovillage.org - Urban 4 acre Permaculture Eco-Village
http://planetrepair.wordpress.com/ - Awesome Urban Permaculture Site & the Planet Repair Institute
other Portland Area cohousing and intentional communities:
Cascadia Commons www.cascadiacommons.com
Daybreak Cohousing www.daybreakcohousing.org
Peninsula Park Commons www.penparkcommons.org
Trillium Hollow Cohousing www.trilliumhollow.org
Kailash Ecovillage www.kailashecovillage.com
