California Assisted Living (RCFE) Facilities

California calls its assisted living homes Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly, or RCFEs, and it licenses about 8,600 of them. Most are small six-bed board-and-care homes in ordinary houses, and the rest range from 15-bed homes to big continuing care retirement communities. The state publishes the list, but it's split across open data files with padded columns, odd type codes and every kind of facility mixed together.

This Actor pulls out just the RCFEs, cleans them up, and (by default) adds inspection and citation detail from the CCLD Transparency API: visit dates, Type A/B citation counts, complaint summaries, and deficiencies parsed from evaluation reports.

What you get

Field	Example
facility_number	207209367 (the CDSS license number)
facility_name	OUR HOUSE - WESTGATE
facility_type	Residential Care for the Elderly or RCFE - Continuing Care Retirement Community
licensed_capacity, small_home_6_or_fewer	6, true
street, city, state, zip, county	2816 WESTAGTE DRIVE, MADERA, CA, 93637, Madera
latitude, longitude	36.9558, -120.0955
facility_phone	(559) 661-8961
ccld_regional_office	FRESNO RO
license_first_date	2024-11-01
licensee	OUR HOUSE RESIDENTIAL CARE, INC. (business licensees only)
license_status	Licensed (from Transparency API when available)
chhs_license_status, chhs_file_date	LICENSED, 2025-05-25
last_visit_date, total_visits, inspection_visits, complaint_visits, other_visits	visit summary from FacilityDetail
type_a_citation_count, type_b_citation_count	official UI totals (TOTTYPE* + NBRINSPTYP* + NBROTHERTYP*)
inspection_dates, complaint_summary, reports	dates and report metadata (report_api_url, no fakeout.gov links)
citations	parsed Type A/B deficiencies (section, title, requirement, deficient practice, POC due date, plan of correction)
citations_included	true when Transparency fetch succeeded
source_url	https://www.ccld.dss.ca.gov/carefacilitysearch/FacDetail/207209367

Dates are ISO (YYYY-MM-DD). Addresses are shown exactly as the state spells them, typos included. Long statutory and narrative text is truncated; nothing is invented.

Who it's for

• Placement agencies and referral services building a county-by-county list of homes
• Vendors (pharmacy, home health, hospice, staffing, software) who sell to RCFEs and want capacity, location and citation history for targeting
• Operators and investors sizing up a market
• Directory sites and researchers who need a clean statewide roster with coordinates and inspection facts

Input

{
  "counties": ["Los Angeles", "Orange"],
  "cities": [],
  "zipCodes": [],
  "minCapacity": 7,
  "ccrcOnly": false,
  "includeCitations": true,
  "maxFacilities": 0,
  "requestDelaySecs": 1
}

• counties: county names with or without the word "County". Leave it empty for the whole state.
• cities / zipCodes: narrow it down further.
• minCapacity: 7 skips the six-bed homes, which leaves the larger communities.
• ccrcOnly: only RCFEs that are part of a continuing care retirement community.
• includeCitations: default true. Set false for a fast roster-only run (no Transparency API calls).
• maxFacilities: cap the run, handy for a quick test.
• requestDelaySecs: polite pause between Transparency API calls (0.75–3.0 seconds).

How much does it cost?

You pay per facility returned, and (when platform pricing is applied) per citation parsed. A roster-only run finishes in under a minute. With citations on, expect roughly one to a few dozen Transparency API requests per facility, so small counties are the right place to start.

Where the data comes from

• CDSS Community Care Licensing facility roster on the CHHS GIS open data hub. This is the current list (updated weekly or so) and supplies the name, type, capacity, address, county, phone, coordinates and regional office.
• CHHS Open Data Portal, "Community Care Licensing Facilities: RCFE" file. This adds the first license date, the licensee and the license status. The state refreshes it less often, so chhs_file_date tells you how current those three fields are. Facilities licensed after that date don't have them yet.
• CCLD Transparency API (FacilityDetail and FacilityReports). Visit counts, Type A/B totals, complaint summaries, report metadata, and the HTML evaluation reports that contain Section Cited deficiencies.

Every record also links to the facility's page on the CDSS Care Facility Search.

Limitations

• Citations and inspection reports are included when the Transparency API is up (default includeCitations: true). If a facility's Transparency fetch fails, roster fields are kept and citations_included is set to false.
• Boilerplate report pages that only define what Type A/B means (with no Section Cited lines) are skipped.
• Licensee names are included only when the licensee is a business. Individual licensees and facility administrators are left out on purpose.
• A handful of facilities have no county or coordinates in the state roster, and those fields are null.
• This is public licensing data and is not endorsed by CDSS or CHHS. Check the state record before making care decisions.

FAQ

Is this the same as "assisted living"? In California, yes. RCFE is the state's license for assisted living, including memory care homes. Adult residential facilities for younger adults and skilled nursing homes are not included.

How fresh is it? The roster is pulled live from the state's open data each run. Citation detail is pulled live from the Transparency API for each matched facility.

Do I need a login or API key? No. It uses only public open data files and the public Transparency API.