Cost of Living
per year
per month
How East Los Angeles's prices compare to the US city average across major spending categories.
How far does your salary go in East Los Angeles?
Your $100,000 in East Los Angeles has the same purchasing power as $74,145 in the average US city. You'd need $25,855 more here to maintain that standard of living.
Demographics and workforce data from the US Census ACS 5-Year.
bachelor's or higher
Climate, safety, and walkability indicators.
See a side-by-side breakdown of cost of living, housing, and salaries.
Popular comparisons
Sorted by affordability — most affordable first.
Within 10 points of East Los Angeles's cost index of 135, sorted by closest match.
So why do people move to East Los Angeles? The honest answer involves a few specific things the data backs up — most clearly lower-than-average crime numbers and you don't actually need a car. The detail on each one is below.
Reported crime in East Los Angeles comes in around 2,396 per 100,000 — under the national baseline of about 3,500. Worth digging into specific neighborhoods before settling on one, but the city-level picture is on the safer side.
With a Walk Score of 82/100, East Los Angeles is in the category where car ownership becomes a real choice rather than the default. Errands work on foot, the city's built dense enough that things are actually close together, and the parking-and-gas budget can quietly disappear. Transit Score comes in at 63/100 too, so even the trips that are too far to walk are usually doable on a bus or train.
Reasons are pulled from East Los Angeles's actual data — Census ACS, BLS, BEA, NOAA, EPA AQS, FBI, and Walk Score. We don't list positives that aren't supported by the numbers, which is why different cities show different sections.
It's rare. Winters in East Los Angeles run about 50°F — cold-snap mornings happen, real snowfall doesn't, except maybe once a decade.
Not very. Average winter temperatures of about 50°F mean East Los Angeles skips the harsh-winter problem most of the country has. A handful of cold mornings, otherwise sweater weather at worst.
Warm without being brutal. Summer in East Los Angeles sits about 75°F on average. Afternoons can push into the high 80s, but mornings and evenings are usually genuinely pleasant.
Approximately USDA Hardiness Zone 10. That's the band gardeners use to pick plants — anything rated for Zone 10 or colder should survive a typical winter in East Los Angeles. (The estimate is derived from our winter-temperature data; the official USDA map uses station-level annual minimums and may differ by half a zone.)
Around 210 feet (64 m) above sea level — flat enough that nothing about East Los Angeles's altitude shows up in daily life.
Middle of the pack. East Los Angeles comes in around 2,396 per 100,000, basically the national average. The interesting question is usually which neighborhood, not which city — that's where the real variation lives.
Significantly. East Los Angeles's index of 135 puts it in the top tier of US cities for cost of living — roughly 35% above the national baseline. The pattern is familiar: housing eats a large share of incomes, and people earning median-equivalent jobs from cheaper metros feel the difference fast.
East Los Angeles scores 82/100 on Walk Score, putting it in the "very walkable" tier. Transit Score is 63 out of 100. It's the kind of city where you don't think of going to the grocery store as "going" to the grocery store.
As a rule of thumb, plan on about $94,409 to live in East Los Angeles the way a $70,000 earner lives in a typical US city. The math gets less forgiving the lower you go below that. Median rent in East Los Angeles runs about $1,369/mo — keeping housing under 30% of gross income points to a similar floor on what you'd want to earn.