Nurse moving to Chicago from Ohio (Oak Park: apartment, rent, safe neighborhood)

[tthomps4]

Hello,

My partner and I are moving to Chicago in July and are looking for some advice on neighborhoods. He will be a graduate student at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and I am a new graduate nurse. I have not yet found a job to know what hospital I will be working at, but we would like to be as close to downtown and UIC as possible. We would like to find a safe neighborhood, 2 bedroom apartment, easy and less than 30 minute commute to downtown, and rent not much more than $1200. Do you have any suggestions for neighborhoods?

Thanks!!

[soulful]

Hi there.
The second thread in this Chicago forum, "Read this...", has a lot of useful info for newcomers regarding neighborhoods, etc. You may want to check it out if you haven't already.

Personally, I don't care for the areas surrounding UIC and think you are wise to be open to living within 30 minutes of downtown. Not sure if you meant 30 minutes from UIC? Or the Loop? Since you don't have a job you may just mean you are planning to work downtown if possible.

I am most familiar with the northside along the Lake and my favorite neighborhood is Lakeview. You can get a 2 br for 1200.00 (barely). You could also check out Wicker Park and Bucktown which are more inland but not so far from UIC/the Loop. All depends on whether you all are planning to commute by automobile or public as that would need to be factored in (including garage costs in many cases).

You could also live in Oak Park (a cool suburb immediately west of Chicago and close to UIC). However, hard to figure all of this out until you know at which hospital you will be working.

Good luck to you and I am sure others on this forum will give you some input.

[Geostud]

^Good recommendations.

I would agree that the area around UIC is not very lively or attractive. I would recommend Wicker Park/Bucktown because it would be easy to commute on the blue line from there to UIC (maybe a 30 minute ride at most).

[Wildcatbonk]

agree with Wicker Park

[tthomps4]

Thanks for your suggestions!! We will definitely have to check out these areas, we will be making 2 trips to the city this month.

I think we are hoping to be less than 30 min from UIC, since we don't know where I will be working yet.

Thanks!!

[jwaiter]

ukrainian village, smith park area, west town, east village.