Rents holding flat in LA, with two-bedrooms going for $1,760

Halfway through the year and the cost of rent isn’t budging in the city of Los Angeles.

The median price of a two-bedroom is holding steady at $1,760, up just .1 percent since June and .6 percent since July of last year, according to ApartmentList, which uses census data to estimate the cost of rent in hundreds of locations across the country.

Residents in a handful of other cities—San Francisco ($3,100), San Jose ($2,670), New York ($2,560), Boston ($2,140), and San Diego ($2,030)—pay a lot more for rent.

Even in some LA cities, the rent is higher: $2,190 in Santa Monica, $2,680 in West Hollywood, and $1,830 in Glendale, according to Apartment List.

But the rent report doesn’t paint a holistic view of the cost of housing in Los Angeles. The city is considered the third most unaffordable in the country, because wages did not keep up when rents were raising at a faster clip. (By comparison, the cost of rent grew by more than 5.5 percent from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016.)

A typical renter in Los Angeles now brings home just $44,000 per year, when $53,600 is needed to afford the price of a one-bedroom, according the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. Residents who earn less are spending more than one-third of their income on rent and are considered “rent-burdened.”

Many professionals and experts who work with homeless residents and renters say the cost of rent has fueled the huge growth in LA’s homeless population.