I recently got a promotion and need to move my family to Chicago from a very small town in Western Maryland. I'll be working in the loop and am looking at potential places to rent. We have 2 girls and a boy, ages 10, 8 and 4. My younger daughter has mild autism, previously Asperger's. We also have a small dog. We've been looking at suburbs on the North and West with good schools such as Naperville, Barrington, Mount Prospect, & Arlington Heights but I've been finding the rent to average around $1800-2200+ for a 3-4 bedroom place and am struggling to find something a bit cheaper than that.
Would like to keep my car for costco or Sam's trips if possible, but our main priorities are:
1)a decent school (public, small class size, daughter with mild autism would do well)
2) reasonable commute to downtown Chicago
3) safe walk-able location close to grocery store
Total pre-tax salary is $80k. About $7500 in high-interest credit card debt I'm working to pay off, no other debt. Credit score around 650 due to 96% CC utilization and a bankruptcy from around 5 years ago. No late payments. We don't have a rough budget proposed as we're moving from roughly half the salary in a low cost rural area.
Any thoughts or suggestions?