Where to live near St James Hospital, leeds?

elephantrosie

I will be moving to leeds in few months time and am looking for a place to live. I do not own a car (nor a driving license.. but am attending lessons for it now), so would like to live somewhere within walking distance to my workplace- st james hospital.

unfortunately, jimmies is in harehills, which is infamous for violence.

Just trying my luck to see if any forumers here work or has worked at jimmies and where do you guys live/ lived?
Would it be safe for me to live just opposite the hospital and apply common sense like no walking in the dark, etc? is harehills a definite no to live in?

i only need a single room, so ideally not want to rent a whole house or apartment.

vuvuzela

Harehills isn't great, I'd agree with that. Might be a good idea to say what sort of walk you'd be comfortable with - half an hour or 10 minutes etc ? Also, it's on a handful of bus routes and buses stop outside, so given that, you could be living pretty much anywhere. As an example, I live in Burley to the west of the city - the bus goes from there to Jimmy's. Burley / Kirkstall LS4 / LS5 are a bit student-y areas (or more accurately where a lot of ex-students move to if they're staying in Leeds), but that means there will be availability of rooms in shared houses and rents aren't ridiculous.

vuvuzela

As an example (and obviously I am not recommending this specifically), there's a room in a shared house for £300/month, bills included http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-59610611.html Single bed or studio flats will be around £400, but bills extra - depends on how much you value your privacy I guess, eg http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-64986536.html
Both of these are 5 mins walk to the bus that drops you off outside Jimmy's (likely around 20-25 mins bus journey, depending on time of day etc).

scriv

Very near Jimmy's are apartments in the Citispace block... studio/ 1 bed and 2 bed if you had a friend to share. http://www.citispace.co.uk

wannabe_sybil

There are dozens of buses that go to St James, http://www.wymetro.com/uploadedFiles/WYMetro/Content/howtogetto/Hospitals/StJamesUniHosp.pdf

I personally would not like to live within walking distance of St James, but perhaps a day trip and a look around will help, or if there is a contact in your new job.

If you go to somewhere like Roundhay or Chapel Allerton it is not inexpensive and you still have to walk through Harehills but they are not too distant, and quite nice.

nkkingston

If you've got somewhere really close to the hospital, I wouldn't worry too much about Harehills (and there are some apartments almost on top of it - presumably you'll get the hang of sleeping through the ambulance sirens!) but it's probably not somewhere you'd want to live long term.

Obviously it depends on your definition of walking distance - I've lived in Headingley and Burley and always walked to St James when i needed to be there (OH has health issues that mean we're pretty familiar with it, and also the Thackeray Museum on site is brilliant!), but depending on when your shifts start and end you may not fancy 45 minutes schlepping along the ring road. You can actually live pretty damn close to the city centre without paying too much out in rent - there are some odd pockets of houses squeezed into unexpected places.

In general, the graduate areas of Leeds like Burley and Hyde Park are slightly over the wrong side for you, but they're cheap and decent areas and have everything in walking distance. Bramley and Armley are also cheap and less studenty, but the wrong side of the river for you. Headingley and Chapel Allerton are where the yummy mummies and hipsters migrate once they're done being graduates. Further out still you get into rather more expensive territory, like Horsforth and Roundhay.

cyantist

You can rent a room in a 2-bed apartment in the city centre block for a reasonable price. Ones near the royal armouries/brewery wharf area would be easy to walk to St James's from and also mean that when you go out on an evening it's again just a short walk home from the centre.

The buses seem to stop running ridiculously early in Leeds so if any shift work is involved with the OPs job, then relying on buses isn't sensible anyway. Also you're looking at £55 a month for a bus pass which might be better spent on renting somewhere nicer.

In terms of Harehills itself though, there's much worse areas of Leeds that don't get anywhere near such a bad press. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's not as bad as most people think.

Marktheshark

I live in Leeds and here is some real advice.
It is not as bad as people make out around Harehills , there is crime in Harehills but it is targeted amongst know villains who have turf wars.
The streets to the east of Becket Street and Ashley Avenue are the better ones to look at from a renting point of view.

elephantrosie

thanks all.
i do go to jimmys at least once a month now for teaching and harehills look scary (even while travelling in the car). the area outside the hospital looks good though, so i preferably would like to live there. i dont think there are houses right opposite the hospital, are there? i have seen houses directly behind the hospital, but that seems to be much quieter area.

i can sleep with ambulance sirens.. thats not an issue.