What Long-Term Care Costs by Region in California

California against the national median

The 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey collected rates from long-term care providers across the country. For California the pattern holds across the major categories, with one exception worth noting: adult day health care runs slightly below the national median here, while in-home care, assisted living, and nursing care all run above it.

Annual medians from the 2025 CareScout Cost of Care Survey. Adult day health care is the one category measured where the California median sits slightly below the national figure. Medians describe a market rather than any particular provider, and actual costs vary considerably. Confirm current rates for the specific communities you would consider.

The gap between a semi-private and a private nursing home room is itself substantial, and it is a choice families frequently do not realize they are making until they are making it quickly.

The variation inside the state

This is the finding that matters most for planning, and it is usually lost when California is reported as a single number.

For a private nursing home room, the survey shows markets in parts of the Central Valley around ten to eleven thousand dollars a month, while several Bay Area markets exceed twenty thousand. That is close to a doubling across a single state, and it is a larger spread than the difference between the California median and the national one.

Southern California sits between those extremes rather than at the top, and the coastal markets generally run above the inland ones. For households in the Santa Clarita Valley the relevant comparison is usually the Los Angeles market and the neighboring Oxnard, Thousand Oaks and Ventura area, rather than the statewide figure or the national one.

Two practical consequences follow. A plan built on a national average will understate the exposure for most California households. And where care would actually be received, which is often near adult children rather than in the retirement home itself, can change the figure by a wide margin.

What this means locally

For a Santa Clarita Valley household the question is rarely abstract. It usually arrives as one of three situations.

• Staying in place. In-home care is the most common first step and is often assumed to be the cheaper option. At California rates, extensive in-home care can approach or exceed facility costs once the hours rise.
• Moving nearer family. Where the adult children are elsewhere in California, the cost of care can change substantially with the move. Where they are out of state, the comparison changes again.
• A couple with different needs. One spouse needing facility care while the other remains at home produces two sets of housing costs at once, which is the scenario that most often breaks a projection built on a single figure.

None of these is predictable in timing. All three are reasonably estimable in cost, which is what makes them a planning item rather than a worry.

What the figures do not include

Care cost surveys measure the cost of care. Several related expenses sit outside them and belong in the projection separately.

Medicare generally does not pay for ongoing custodial care, so these costs are not offset by it. The widely cited retirement health care estimates, including Fidelity's, explicitly exclude long-term care, which means a household using one of those figures has not yet accounted for any of this. Retirement health care before and after Medicare covers that side.

The figures also exclude the household costs that continue during a care event, the cost of modifying a home for ageing in place, and the financial consequences for a family member who reduces paid work to provide care. That last one is real and almost never budgeted.

Using them in a projection

A figure on its own does not change a plan. Three steps turn it into something usable.

The first is choosing a region, which means deciding where care would plausibly be received rather than defaulting to where the household lives now. The second is choosing a duration to model. A care event is not a permanent state, and modeling an indefinite one produces a result that fails every scenario and therefore guides nothing.

The third is an inflation assumption specific to care costs rather than the general rate used for the rest of the budget, since care costs have been rising faster. The expense projection covers why category-specific assumptions matter.

With those three in place, the scenario can be run against the income plan to show what it would displace: which spending would flex, whether the survivor's position changes, and whether the funding would come from the portfolio, from insurance, or from a combination. Planning for long-term care costs in California covers who handles which part of that work.

How Avinci approaches it

Avinci Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Adviser registered in California, Arizona, Illinois, Texas, and Nevada, firm CRD #327780, headquartered at 23929 Valencia Blvd, Suite 404 in Santa Clarita, with additional offices in Beverly Hills and Woodland Hills. When providing investment advisory services, Avinci Wealth Management is subject to its fiduciary obligations under applicable investment adviser law.

Under the Retirement Blueprint, a care scenario is projected against the income plan using regional figures rather than a national average, with the duration and the inflation assumption written down so they can be tested at each review. Founder Lindahl Lucas personally oversees the development of each Retirement Blueprint.

Avinci does not practice law, does not determine Medi-Cal eligibility, and does not provide medical or care advice. Eligibility questions go to an elder law attorney. Insurance and annuity products, including contracts with long-term care features, are offered through our affiliate, Lucas Insurance Services, which may receive commissions from issuing insurance companies. This compensation arrangement creates a conflict of interest and is disclosed in our Form ADV.