How this works
Every fact on this site, its source, its refresh cadence, and its last refresh date — plus how the pages are generated, what we don’t know, and how we’re paid.
Where does every fact on this site come from?
Every fact displayed on this site comes from a named public source — chiefly the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) Community Care Licensing Division, which licenses and inspects every residential care facility for the elderly (RCFE) in California, plus the DHCS Assisted Living Waiver list and published SSI/SSP payment standards. The table below lists each fact type, its source system, its refresh cadence, and the date of its most recent successful refresh, read live from our pipeline ledger.
| Fact shown on this site | Source system | Refresh cadence | Last refresh |
|---|---|---|---|
| License status, license number, licensed capacity, address | CDSS Community Care Licensing — live state facilities layer (data.ca.gov) + CDSS facility-search records | Weekly | not on file |
| Citation counts, substantiated-complaint counts, visit recency | CDSS facility-search transparency records (ccld.dss.ca.gov) | Weekly | August 2, 2026 |
| Care clearances: dementia, hospice, non-ambulatory, bedridden | CDSS facility record — client-served designations + license comments text, copied without rewording | Weekly | August 2, 2026 |
| Inspection & complaint report list (dates, titles, types) | CDSS transparency records — per-facility report catalog | Weekly | not on file |
| Verbatim inspection narratives & residents-present-at-inspection | CDSS inspection/complaint documents, parsed by deterministic code and quoted verbatim | Weekly | not on file |
| Medi-Cal / Assisted Living Waiver participation | DHCS Assisted Living Waiver participating-facility list | Weekly | not on file |
| Same-operator portfolios (other homes run by this licensee) | Derived from licensee names on the CDSS roster | Weekly | not on file |
| SSI/SSP board-and-care rate floor | California SSI/SSP payment standards (CDSS, cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/ssi-ssp) | Re-checked each cycle; the state updates the rate annually | not on file |
| Neighborhood context (census tract of the address) | U.S. Census Bureau geocoder | Once per facility (geographic; changes only if a home moves) | not on file |
| County cost bands (market context, never a quote) | Published market surveys: CareScout/Genworth 2025 Cost of Care + California market guides — not a state record | Compiled June 17, 2026; reviewed periodically | June 17, 2026 (compiled) |
How are these pages generated?
Every facility, city, and county page on this site is generated automatically from the public records in the table above — there is no hand-written review content on record pages. The extraction is deterministic code: statuses, dates, and counts are copied field-for-field from the state record; inspection narratives are quoted verbatim and attributed to the state document they came from; no language model writes or rewrites what you read. Where a value cannot be verified, we store nothing rather than guess. Last full pipeline pass: not on file.
How current is the data?
Our pipelines run on a weekly cycle against the state’s systems; the most recent successful refresh completed not on file. License status has a stricter rule: it is re-checked live, directly against the state, at the moment a Check report or referral renders — we never present a live-looking status from stored data. State inspection records can themselves lag the inspection, so we always display the record’s own dates and let you judge recency.
What do we show — and what do we never show?
We display license status, capacity, citation counts, substantiated complaint findings, visit history, and the legal care designations (hospice, dementia, non-ambulatory, bedridden) exactly as the state’s records carry them (CDSS records, refreshed not on file). We never compute star ratings or quality scores, never editorialize a record, and never display a “verified” capability without a source. Where the state record is silent, we say “not on file” — we don’t guess.
Context numbers on report pages (for example, “82% of California’s 8,374 licensed homes have zero immediate-risk citations on the state’s recent record”) are computed from the full statewide dataset on this site, using the same recent-window counts the state shows on its own facility search.
What does “not on file” mean?
“Not on file” means the state record we hold is silent — it never means “no.” For example, as of not on file, the bedridden-care field is absent from the state record for 4,630 of 8,384 licensed homes; those pages say “not on file” rather than implying the home cannot provide that care. When a record is silent we show the absence, with its source and date, and never fill the gap with a guess.
What are the known limitations?
The important limits, plainly: state records can lag real events by days to weeks; the state roster we load lists licensed elder-care homes in 48 of California’s 58 counties (the remaining counties have no licensed RCFE on that roster); the state does not publish closure dates in the records we ingest; and first-license dates in our copy stop at the state’s May 2025 bulk roster — so we do not display “newly licensed this year” counts anywhere. Sources and dates as in the table above.
- Formerly licensed homes stay visible with their closed status — that history is the honest answer to “is this home licensed?” — but the date a license closed is not in the state files we load, so we do not show one.
- The state publishes document pages for only some report types (chiefly complaint investigations); other reports appear on facility pages as dated entries without a deep link.
- Clearance fields the state leaves blank render as “not on file” (see above); the bedridden field is blank for roughly half the homes we list — 4,008 of 8,420 as of 25 July 2026 — so its absence is common and carries no signal about any individual home.
- Cost figures are county-level market context, never facility quotes — method in the next section.
How are the cost numbers produced?
We never display a per-facility price: no home has given us a rate sheet, and the state record carries none. Cost context comes from two sourced numbers. First, the SSI/SSP board-and-care payment standard of $1,626.07/month — $1,444.07 of it is the room-and-board portion paid to the home, and $182 stays with the resident as a personal-needs allowance (California SSI/SSP rates, effective January 1, 2026). Second, county cost bands compiled June 17, 2026 from published market surveys (CareScout/Genworth 2025 Cost of Care and California market guides). Bands are deliberately wide: they describe a county market, never a specific home.
How are we paid?
Families never pay us anything — checking a home is free and matching is free. If a family asks for placement help and chooses a facility, that facility pays us a standard fee, disclosed to the family up front; we charge no fee where the law forbids one (including Medi-Cal/Assisted Living Waiver and SSI-rate placements). No facility can pay to appear here, rank higher, be recommended, or soften its record — every licensed facility in California is listed on the same terms. More on the About page.
How do corrections work?
Anyone — an operator or a family — can report an error by email; we acknowledge within 2 business days and re-check the disputed field against the state’s own systems. If the state record confirms the correction, we fix the page and publish a dated entry in our public corrections log. If we cannot verify a claim against the state record, we keep showing the state record and note the dispute. Full process and log: covelightcare.com/corrections.
Source: California Department of Social Services, Community Care Licensing Division public records; DHCS Assisted Living Waiver program data; California SSI/SSP payment standards. This site presents public-record information and is not medical or legal advice.