Comparisons by City
Senior living is marketed as one category and sold as three. Independent living, assisted living, and memory care have different licensing requirements, different staffing models, and different price points, and a single community's website can describe all three without making clear which one applies to a given price listed on the page.
State licensing is the detail that actually protects a resident, and it is checkable. Assisted living and memory care communities are licensed by the state they operate in, and that license status is public record. We record whether a community states its license type and, where the state publishes it, whether that license is current.
Staffing ratio is the number families ask about after move-in and rarely before. A community that publishes a staff-to-resident ratio or a stated night-staffing commitment is giving a family something to compare. Most communities do not publish one at all, and that absence is itself part of the comparison.
Pricing structure is the last gap. A base monthly rate plus care-level add-ons can end up costing more than an all-inclusive rate that looked higher at first glance. We record which pricing model a community states, where it states one.