Greetings people from Salt Lake! My daughter will be attending the University of Utah in Salt Lake in the fall. I was hoping to get some opinions as to what area of town would be a nice, safe area and close to the University for a rental. I will be flying out to SLC in about a month to look around but thought I might get some info from this Fodor's site. I've always had pretty good luck with obtaining info this way! Thanks...

One of the problems with the University of Utah is that there are so many commuter students who don't live near the University and students often don't get the college experience they are looking for if they don't live on campus. They built new dorms for the 2002 Winter Olympics that are suppose to be very nice. http://collegeprowler.com/university...ampus-housing/ I would recommend living on campus in the dorms at least for the first year.

The new dorms are nice if your daughter can get them. As for places to live--that depends on your budget. The cheap places near the U tend to be gross--and the decent places tend to be expensive (supply and demand). There are very few places to park on campus--they truly expect you to use mass transit to get to campus--so that should be a consideration--live close to a bus or train route. Google Utah Transit Authority for bus/train route information.

Here are the "coordinates" for living close and safe to the U:
North: clear up into the Avenues is safe but most apartments are in the lower avenues (check a map and you will see 1st avenue, 2nd etc and the cross streets are C-U Street)
South: You could go as far South as the Sugarhouse neighborhood (21st south) and still be within ok commuting distgance
East: you can go as far east as you want and be fine
West: now this is where it gets tricky. Pretty much anything east of 900 EAst is fine. In some places, you can go as far west as 700 East and you may be able to go to 500 East. (check out a map and this will make sense) This is very neighborhood/street dependent.

One caveat: check out the registered sex offenders data base for the zip codes you like. Avenues is 84103 for example. And there are a LOT of offenders in certain apartment complex clusters, eg. along South Temple street. So check that out!! Granted, people can move around, but when you see those concentrations, then you have a place that will take offenders and will likely take more when they are released from prison. There are plenty of wonderful streets in the AVenues, but this is an example of how one of the more expensive zip codes in SLC can still have problems!

Thank you BarbaraS AND StantonHyde for your quick replies. I should've been a little more clear on my daughter attending the University of Utah. She is 28 and going to the University of Utah to work there and get her PHd! My husband and I will be traveling to Salt Lake this weekend to try and help her find a place to live. She is actually working in Lousiana for the BP oil spill at the present time. Someone at the school did mention the Sugarhouse neighborhood so we will check out that area too. Thank you so much for the replies!

Then you may also want to look at the area between 27th south and 33th south (north-south borders) and Highland Drive to the 215 freeway. That's where I lived when I was single and I really loved my 1940s bunagalow. The other idea would be the Liberty Park neighborhood (7th east to 11th east; 9th south to 15th south) or the Nibley Park--same east coordinates, but more like 1700 south to 2100 south. The same east coordinates with 2100 south-3300 south is a little more dicey, but not so bad if there is a male presence around the house at night.

Note--it is Pioneer Day this weekend--big hoopla--so make sure you know the parade route and expect traffic.

Thank you StantonHyde! Any info helps. We live in Palm Beach County right now and today's Palm Beach Post was warning about looking on Craigslist for rentals because of so many scams. Here, People who say they own the rental are renting out places when they don't really own the place! Yikes. Don't want that happening to us. I will look into your suggested places. Thank you!

Salt Lake City is sooooooooooo relatively safe.

One thing: Make sure you pay detailed attention to addresses there. All of the streets (like most everything else) are centered around the Mormon Temple, and there is West Temple Ave, South Temple Ave, North Temple Ave, and East Temple Ave.

Those are fairly easy to fathom, but when the addresses start reading like

"W. North Temple Avenue"

... you can get confused. (perhaps not by that ONE, isolated addy, but when another nearby is "N. West Temple Avenue" your mind can begin to approach how you feel after you've been driving for far too long at one sitting)


Anyway, S.L.C. is relatively safe compared to normal cities of its size, and it is a lovely place most any time of the year.