I'm primarily interested in buy and hold due to the strong rental market in my area (large military population), but am open to potential "flips" if that's a better proposition for a particular property.

Hi Lance in the past I would have said that is the perfect time to invest in Salem but we are in a weird market the highest population is 24,23,25 years old in that order and they do not want to own a house and want to live in a popular city so you may be right that Salem is not going to take off  as it would have in the past just from Portland's influence.

everytime i visit its shocking how the population, street litter etc just grows and grows; will it ever hit critical mass?

I know some agents definitely believe the continuing growth of jobs/population in the region will keep driving home values higher.

My previous experience is in Data analysis and predictive modeling.I am also very concerned with the homeless population and would like to work with some people to create a homeless community that can help homeless people get back into the working world and help give them an opportunity to build up from where they are.

The household formation rate has still not picked up enough after the Great Recession to match underlying population growth.

While I concur with @Carrie Hiner that predicting the financial future is difficult I'm not certain the population pressure will subside substantially within 5 years time. 

They got through the crawl space grate for the owner and the cats were not spayed so populated and got out of control.

I have definitely seen articles about the declining population but have also seen as we've looked for property in Logan Square that property is being bought up as fast as it can be listed.

I live in Kelowna so I am obviously biased but Kelowna has a few major advantages over Kamloops - first being UBCO is here (huge student population) along with Okanagan College.