Which assisted living facilities accept Medi-Cal in California?

1,224 residential care facilities for the elderly participate in California's Assisted Living Waiver, which is the only route by which Medi-Cal pays for assisted living in this state. They are spread across 15 counties; the remaining 43 have none. This page lists every one of them by county and city, with licence number and phone number, rebuilt from the DHCS open dataset.

Does Medi-Cal pay for assisted living in California?

Only through the Assisted Living Waiver, and only at a facility that participates in it. The waiver pays the care-services portion. It does not pay room and board, which the resident covers from their own income. A facility that is not on the waiver list will not take Medi-Cal at any price.

How do I find a Medi-Cal assisted living facility near me?

Open your county below, then filter by the city nearest you. Call each facility and ask three things: whether they have an ALW bed open now or a waitlist, what their room-and-board charge is, and whether they hold CDSS secured-perimeter approval if your parent wanders.

What if my county has no participating facility?

43 of California's 58 counties have no ALW facility at all. Three practical routes: bridge at home with IHSS, which exists in every county and can pay a family member; look at an adjacent county, since many families have more geographic flexibility than they assume; or, if care needs are at nursing-facility level, use Medi-Cal skilled nursing, which is available statewide without this waitlist.

Is a bigger facility better?

No, they are different products. A six-bed home is a converted house with one or two caregivers on shift, quieter and more personal, but with nowhere to move if care needs rise. A hundred-bed community has tiered care levels so a resident can often stay in the building, but is usually private-pay-heavy with waiver beds opening irregularly. Licensed capacity, shown on every listing here, is the only signal of which one you are about to call.

Assisted living that accepts Medi-Cal in California

Assisted living that accepts Medi-Cal in California: the full list.

In California, Medi-Cal pays for assisted living only through the Assisted Living Waiver, and 1,224 residential care facilities across 15 of the state's 58 counties currently participate, holding about 39,065 licensed beds between them. California Care Compass rebuilt that list facility by facility from the Department of Health Care Services' own open dataset, verified 2026-08-29, because DHCS publishes it only as a county-organised PDF.

What this list is

Medi-Cal pays for assisted living in California through exactly one mechanism: the Assisted Living Waiver. A facility either participates in it or it does not, and a facility that does not will not accept Medi-Cal at any price. So the practical question a family is asking, which facilities near me take Medi-Cal, has a precise answer, and this is it.

The Department of Health Care Services maintains the record and publishes it as a county-organised PDF. California Care Compass rebuilt it facility by facility from the department’s own open GIS dataset, verified 2026-08-29: 1,224 participating facilities across 15 counties, about 39,065 licensed beds, each with its licence number, address and phone number.

This is a record, not a ranking. We do not rate these facilities and this page is not a recommendation of any of them. Everything here comes from the state’s own dataset, and the CSV is open under CC BY 4.0 so anyone can check our arithmetic against DHCS.

Read this before you call

Participation is not availability. Every facility here has agreed to accept Assisted Living Waiver payment. None of them is promising an open bed. Capacity moves week to week and the only way to know is to ask.
Waiver participation is not memory-care approval. A facility that takes the waiver still needs separate CDSS secured-perimeter approval before it can legally admit a resident who wanders. Ask for that record specifically, on the first call.
The waiver does not cover room and board. It covers the care services. The resident contributes their income toward rent, so ask each facility what its room-and-board charge actually is.
You need an approved waiver slot first. A facility cannot admit you on the waiver until DHCS and a Care Coordination Agency have approved eligibility and a slot is available.
Records are from the DHCS open dataset, verified 2026-08-29. If a listing is wrong, the authoritative version is the DHCS list itself, linked in the sources below.

Every county with participating facilities

Ordered by how many facilities each county holds. Coverage is far more uneven than the statewide total suggests: Los Angeles carries 404 and 43 counties carry none.

County	Facilities	Licensed beds	Avg beds	Cities
Los Angeles County	404	17,688	44	84
Orange County	215	5,155	24	26
Riverside County	132	3,571	27	26
Fresno County	96	1,695	18	5
San Diego County	89	2,624	29	18
Sacramento County	81	2,032	25	9
San Bernardino County	69	2,359	34	20
Kern County	47	672	14	6
Contra Costa County	35	596	17	12
Alameda County	22	1,132	51	8
San Joaquin County	13	633	49	3
Sonoma County	7	210	30	6
San Mateo County	6	248	41	5
Santa Clara County	5	270	54	4
San Francisco County	3	180	60	1

Why average beds per facility is the column to read

Facility count and bed count do not track each other, and the gap changes what a search in that county actually involves. Kern averages 14 licensed beds per facility, the smallest in the state, so its network is almost entirely small residential homes: more phone calls, most of them to owners rather than marketing staff, and a single opening decides the outcome. Alameda averages 51, so the same search means touring a handful of larger communities.

Fresno is the clearest case of why a facility count alone misleads. It has more participating facilities than San Diego and fewer than half the licensed beds.

Cities with enough facilities to search on their own

In these 11 cities the waiver network is dense enough that a family can realistically shortlist without leaving town.

Fresno — 79 facilities, Fresno County
Los Angeles — 48 facilities, Los Angeles County
Bakersfield — 41 facilities, Kern County
Sacramento — 31 facilities, Sacramento County
North Hollywood — 27 facilities, Los Angeles County
Anaheim — 26 facilities, Orange County
Mission Viejo — 24 facilities, Orange County
Riverside — 24 facilities, Riverside County
San Diego — 23 facilities, San Diego County
Escondido — 22 facilities, San Diego County
Corona — 20 facilities, Riverside County

What to ask on the first call

The list gets you a phone number. These five questions get you an answer, and the order matters because the first two disqualify fastest.

Do you have an ALW bed open now, or what does your waitlist look like?
Are you CDSS-approved for secured perimeter, if a resident wanders?
What is your monthly room-and-board charge, given the waiver does not cover it?
What level of care do you admit: two-person transfers, full feeding assistance, behaviour management?
Can I see your most recent Title 22 inspection report and your written response to any citation?

Before any of this matters, two things have to be true

A participating facility cannot admit anyone on the waiver until the state has approved them for it, and eligibility turns on two separate tests families routinely blur together: full-scope Medi-Cal with no share of cost, and an assessment at nursing-facility level of care. A parent can be on Medi-Cal and fail the second, or need that level of care and fail the first. The eligibility rules and the order to apply in are worth settling before you start calling, because no facility on this page can settle them for you.

Related guides and next steps

This guide explains program rules and county-specific contacts, not legal advice. California Care Compass does not place referrals on county or planning pages.