How to Read a California Care Home License Record

Overview

Senior homes in California that are licensed as Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly — RCFEs — are the homes this guide covers. Families usually meet them under everyday names like “assisted living” or “board and care”. California also licenses other kinds of residential care under different licence types, so not every home a directory calls assisted living is an RCFE. The California Department of Social Services issues RCFE licences and publishes a record for each one. Anyone can read those records for free.

The records are useful, but they are written for regulators. This guide explains what each field means, so you can check a home yourself before you spend an afternoon touring it.

One thing to be clear about first: the state licenses homes. It does not rate, score or recommend them. A licence tells you a home has met the state’s requirements to operate. It does not tell you whether the care is good.

What the state file records

The state publishes these fields for each licensed home. The field names below are the state’s own, taken from the published data file.

What the four statuses mean

Each licence record carries a facility_status. In the state file behind this guide it holds one of several raw values, and this guide groups them into four. The four are mutually exclusive — one record has exactly one status, so a record counted as licensed is not also counted as pending or on probation.

Read every status as a fact about that record, not about the building. A licence belongs to a licensee, and an ownership or licensee change means a new application — so one address can carry an old closed record and a current licensed one at the same time.

• LICENSED— this record held a licence as of the file’s snapshot date. This is the status you want to see, and it is still worth confirming against the live record before you visit. The file also lists LICENSED/PENDING INCREASE, a licensed record with a capacity increase in progress; we count it as LICENSED at the capacity the file records.
• PENDING — an application on this record was in progress. It does not by itself mean the address has no licensed operator; check whether a separate licensed record exists there before drawing a conclusion.
• ON PROBATION — the record holds a licence, but it is operating under conditions imposed by the state. This is a signal to ask questions. It is not, on its own, proof that anyone was harmed, and we do not publish why any particular home is on probation. The state file calls this PROBATIONARY LICENSE.
• CLOSED— this licence record ended. That is not the same as the building standing empty: the licensee may have changed and a newer record may be active at the same address. The state file behind this guide does not return closed records, so this guide shows none. The state’s live facility search can still return a record that ended years ago.

These four are the groups this guide uses for this published extract. The state’s live facility search carries more than a snapshot status — enforcement actions such as a suspension or a pending revocation are a different matter from an application marked PENDING, and none of them appear here. Check the live record for current enforcement information before relying on a LICENSED status.

Those last two matter more than they look. In the state file snapshot behind this guide, Sacramento and Placer counties together held 922 licensed homes, 9 on probation and 89 pending. The file does not return closed records, so it shows none, and that does not mean none exist. If you search a home’s name and do not check the status, you have a real chance of reading a record that ended years ago. Before concluding a home is gone — or that it cannot take residents — confirm the current licensee and licence for that address on the live record.

Counts by county and by city are in our census of licensed senior care homes in Sacramento and Placer.

Licensed capacity is not availability

This is the field families misread most often. facility_capacity is the maximum number of residents the state allows a home to have. It is not how many people live there, and it is not how many rooms are free this month.

A six-bed home with a capacity of 6 may be full. A 100-bed community may have one room open. This extract records no occupancy and no openings at all, so availability cannot be determined from it. Confirm current openings directly with the home.

Capacity is still useful — it tells you what kind of place you are looking at. Six residents and one shared kitchen is a different experience from ninety residents and a dining room. That comparison is the subject of assisted living vs board and care.

What to do if something looks wrong

1. Check the live record first. Published data files are snapshots, so a status can have changed since. Search the home at the CDSS Community Care Licensing facility search and use the licence number, not the name.
2. Ask the home directly. A home that is on probation knows it, and how it answers that question tells you something.
3. Ask the licensing office. The regional_office field on the record names the Community Care Licensing office that oversees the home. Inspection and complaint records are held by the state, not by us.
4. If only the city looks off, that is often just naming: the state records a mailing-address city, which is not always the city people say a home is in. A mismatched street address is different — that field is the licensed street address, so a record whose street address is not the building you are visiting may belong to a different location entirely. Confirm it with the home and with the licensing office before you treat the record as that home’s.

Method and source

• Field names and status values are those published by California Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing Division in the Community Care Licensing Care Facility Search transparency API — Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (crawled snapshot) dataset. License: No license asserted: no license statement accompanies the live CCLD transparency API responses.
• State licence file snapshot: October 3, 2026 (retrieved October 3, 2026). The snapshot date is the state’s, not ours. Always check the live record before acting on a status.
• Counts above cover Sacramento and Placer counties only. county_name in (SACRAMENTO, PLACER); counts use records whose raw facility_status is LICENSED or LICENSED/PENDING INCREASE, both normalized to LICENSED.
• facility_capacity is licensed capacity (beds allowed), not occupancy or availability. Rows of facility type RCFE-CONTINUING CARE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY are included in the counts as the source lists them.
• Raw statuses LICENSED and LICENSED/PENDING INCREASE are both counted as LICENSED at the capacity the source records; PROBATIONARY LICENSE is counted as ON PROBATION; PENDING is separate. on_probation and pending are NOT included in licensed_facilities or licensed_beds. The live API does not return CLOSED facilities, so closed_in_file is 0 because the source omits them, not because none closed.
• We have not inspected any home named in the state file, and nothing here is a rating, a recommendation, or medical advice.