Paying for a care home in Orange County — including with Medi‑Cal
The honest version. Including the parts nobody wants to tell you.
Medicare does not pay for room and board in a care home.
Not in assisted living, not in a board-and-care. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling
something. Medicare pays for medical care — a doctor, a nurse, hospice. It does not pay the rent.
The Assisted Living Waiver (ALW) — Medi‑Cal's best-kept secret
California's Assisted Living Waiver lets Medi‑Cal pay for care in a licensed care home instead of a nursing home. Orange County is one of only 15 counties where it operates.
| What it covers | Personal care, homemaker help, home health aide services inside a licensed RCFE. |
| What it does not cover | Room and board. You still pay the rent. At SSI income levels the 2026 room-and-board rate is about $1,444/month. |
| Who qualifies | Full-scope Medi‑Cal with no share of cost, age 65+ (or 21–64 with a disability), and needing a nursing-home level of care. |
| The catch | The waitlist is over 18,000 people. This is the single most important thing on this page. Get on the list now, even if you are not ready to move — the wait is the reason families end up with no options. |
Call us and we will get you on the waitlist today. It's a one-page form and it costs nothing, and it is the difference between having a choice in a year and having none.
What everything actually costs here
| Option | Typical monthly cost |
|---|---|
| Small board-and-care home (6 beds) | Usually $3,500–$6,000 — well below a large community |
| Large assisted living community | Often $7,000+ in Orange County |
| Memory care | Higher again, depending on the level of supervision |
Other ways families pay
| Long-term care insurance | Often covers board-and-care. Bring the policy — most families never read it and leave money on the table. |
| VA Aid & Attendance | A wartime veteran or surviving spouse may qualify for a monthly benefit on top of a VA pension. Badly underused. The amount depends on income and medical expenses — we won't quote you a number we can't stand behind, but we will help you find out what you'd actually get. |
| SSI / SSP | A shrinking number of homes accept the SSI rate. They exist. We know which ones. |
| Family cost-sharing | The most common answer, and the hardest conversation. We've sat in it many times. |
Tell us what you need. We'll find the room.
Free for families. We already know which homes have an opening — because we call them.