Julian Cummings recently returned to his Pacific Beach apartment to find a notice taped to the door.

The message was a real bummer: His rent was going up $100.

Cummings, a 34-year-old account manager for a company that sells wood, currently pays $1,560 per month for the 400 square-foot one-bedroom apartment a block from the beach. His rent already eats up about half his take-home pay, well more than the 30 percent financial experts recommend. Cummings isn’t even sure if he’ll get a raise this year to help defray the increased rent, which doesn’t include any utilities.

Cummings isn’t alone in seeing the rent go up. Renters

in San Diego are continuously getting squeezed by robust demand for apartments, amid already low supply. This week, the Marcus and Millichap brokerage firm reported that the average rent in San Diego County was $1,630 a month, up 5.3 percent over the last year. To make matters worse, the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that wages are growing in the county at less than 1 percent per year.