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What Assisted Living Costs in Minnesota

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Ten regions, and four carry another state's name. Because the national cost survey builds its map from federal metro areas rather than state lines, Minnesota families in the west and the south find their assisted living figures under Fargo, Grand Forks, Sioux Falls, and La Crosse headings. Here is what the 2024 numbers count, what sits on top of them, and where to look for a specific county.

Last updated: July 2026

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Minnesota is surveyed in ten regions, and four are named for other states' cities

The 2024 Cost of Care Survey reports no statewide Minnesota figure. It reports ten regions: Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington; Rochester; Duluth; St. Cloud; Mankato; Fargo; Grand Forks; Sioux Falls; La Crosse, Onalaska; and MN Rest of State 1.

Read that list again. Fargo and Grand Forks are in North Dakota. Sioux Falls is in South Dakota. La Crosse is in Wisconsin. Four of Minnesota's ten lines are named for cities in three neighbouring states — and they are on Minnesota's list because the survey does not draw its own boundaries. It prices care in 431 regions built on 383 federal Metropolitan Statistical Areas defined by the Office of Management and Budget, which redrew its delineations in July 2023. Every 2024 figure uses the newer map, and the survey states outright that those regions "can often include counties from other nearby states" 1.

Minnesota borrows more of its region headings from its neighbours than almost any state. A family in the Red River Valley or the far southeast will not find their number under a Minnesota-sounding name.

The reason to know this before reading a price is simple. A searcher who cannot find a heading that looks like theirs tends to fall back on a statewide average — and a statewide Minnesota average blends the Twin Cities with the Iron Range and the western prairie. It is a number that describes no one in particular, produced by flattening markets the data works hard to keep separate.

What the $5,900 national median counts

In 2024 the national midpoint for an assisted living community landed at $5,900 a month, a ten percent rise from the $5,350 of the year before 1. Annualised, the figure is $70,800 2. Minnesota's regions would not be expected to sit exactly at a national midpoint, but this is still where to begin, because it is the rare cost number whose method is published alongside it.

The method carries three caveats that matter more than the total:

  • It is private pay. The survey records what families pay from their own funds. What a state programme reimburses is a different figure it never collects.
  • It is a one-bedroom unit. Shared accommodation prices below the line; a larger apartment prices above it.
  • It is the middle of a range. Rates were gathered "as they ranged from basic care to more substantial care," and where a community gave a range, the survey used the average of the high and the low 1.

The published median is the midpoint of a basic-to-substantial-care band 1 — so someone needing substantial help is priced above it before any extra is added.

The figures rest on 4,610 completed assisted living surveys drawn from 17 percent of licensed communities, collected between July and December 2024 1. As for the ten percent jump: the survey attributed the assisted living increase mainly to inflation, with labour cost the leading driver for home care instead 1.

Fargo, Grand Forks, Sioux Falls, La Crosse: Minnesota's borrowed headings

These four regions are where Minnesota searches go wrong most often, and the fix takes one minute if you know it is needed. Each names the anchor city of a federal metro area that reaches across a state border into Minnesota, and the survey files each one under Minnesota because Minnesota territory sits inside it 1.

  • Fargo and Grand Forks cover Minnesota's western edge, along the North Dakota line.
  • Sioux Falls reaches the state's southwestern corner.
  • La Crosse, Onalaska reaches the southeastern corner, across the Mississippi from Wisconsin.

The sharing runs in both directions. Duluth, Minneapolis, and La Crosse all appear on Wisconsin's region list as well, because those metros straddle the border too 1. A region belongs to every state it touches, and the heading is silent about which one the reader lives in.

The heading names a metro's anchor cities, not a resident's state. Locate the region containing the county first, and read that line — do not start from a statewide figure and adjust by feel.

One more caution about the small ones. The survey publishes results only for regions where data collection actually succeeded 1, so a thinly covered border region's median rests on fewer completed surveys than the Twin Cities figure does. That is not a reason to dismiss it — it is a reason to read it as a rough centre of gravity rather than a going rate.

The state and regional medians live in the survey's interactive cost-of-care lookup, not in its published summary, which carries the national medians and the region definitions 1. For a specific town, the lookup is the destination.

The Twin Cities, Rochester, Duluth, and the residual

Minnesota's six home-named regions behave differently from one another, and it is worth knowing which is which. Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington is the state's large metro line. Rochester, St. Cloud, Mankato, and Duluth are mid-sized lines with their own economies. And MN Rest of State absorbs whatever is left 1.

That residual deserves particular care in Minnesota, because of what falls into it: the Iron Range, the Boundary Waters counties, the prairie between the named metros. Nothing north of Duluth has a named line of its own.

A residual region — any "rest of state" line — is not a place. It is the remainder after the metros are named, and its median spans a wider, more mixed set of communities than a metro median does.

Why Rochester having its own line is useful. A mid-sized region with a named heading gives families outside the Twin Cities a genuine local reference point instead of a residual. Not every state grants that; Minnesota does for four separate mid-sized markets, which makes its data more readable than most for anyone outside the metro.

For anyone inside the residual, though, four phone calls to communities within driving distance will describe the real market better than any median can. The median's remaining job is narrow and still worth having: it says whether those four quotes are ordinary or strange. And because one instrument prices every state the same way, assisted living cost in Illinois or what assisted living costs in Florida can be set against Minnesota's regions on equal footing 1 — the medians compare cleanly, even where the rules behind them do not.

The base rate, the care level, and the fee before month one

No median anywhere is a bill. Assisted living is typically sold as rent plus a care level, with the level set by an assessment the community performs — before move-in, and again whenever needs shift. Since the survey's figure already sits mid-band between basic and substantial care 1, a resident assessed at a high level begins above the median rather than at it.

Then comes the payment due before anyone has spent a night there. Roughly 58 percent of assisted living communities ask for a one-time, non-refundable fee 1 — generally payable at signing, and generally absent from every monthly figure in circulation.

Around 58% of communities charge a one-time, non-refundable fee that no monthly quote includes 1.

The label on the door is a poor guide to what is inside, and the survey says so with numbers: it counts more than 70 different names or designations for facilities licensed as some form of assisted care community, and fewer than 40 percent of them use the words "assisted living" in their formal name or licensure designation at all 1. Both small group homes and large multi-service communities were counted as assisted living for the study, in the same medians 1.

Five plain questions make the real structure visible, and all are fair to ask on a tour:

  • Where would today's assessment place them, and what does that level add monthly?
  • What triggers a reassessment, and how much notice precedes a level change?
  • Is the one-time fee refundable in any circumstance — a death, or a move within the first month?
  • What were the base-rate increases in each of the last three years?
  • What bills separately: medication management, incontinence care, transport, a second occupant?

Dementia is the cost variable the brochure does not price

The single largest driver of where a resident lands inside that basic-to-substantial band is usually cognition, not mobility. An estimated 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and older were living with Alzheimer's dementia in 2024 3, and dementia is common enough in assisted living that any honest cost conversation has to account for it.

It matters to the arithmetic in a specific way. Dementia rarely changes the rent; it changes the care level, and it changes it more than once. Supervision needs rise, medication management shifts from a prompt to a task, and behaviours that emerge in the evening require staffing that a base rate does not contemplate. Each of those is a reassessment, and each reassessment is a new monthly figure.

A quote reflects the person as they are on the day of the assessment. Where cognition is changing, the quote has a shelf life — and asking what the next two care levels cost is more useful than asking what today's costs.

This is also where a family should be careful about what a median can tell them. The published figure blends residents at every care level in every kind of setting into one number 1. It cannot answer what a specific person with a specific diagnosis will cost, and no survey can. What it can do is tell a family whether a community's opening number is in the ordinary range for its region — and the level pricing, which is not in any survey, is what determines the bill two years from now.

Medicare's limit, Medicaid's authorities, and the run-out date

Start with the boundary that surprises almost everyone. Medicare does not pay for long-term custodial care — help with bathing, dressing, eating, and getting around — in assisted living, in a nursing home, or at home, when that help is the only care needed. Medigap does not fill it either 4. This is what the benefit is, nationally; it is not a Minnesota gap or a defect in a particular plan.

Medicaid is the programme that can reach assisted living, and it does so through several distinct statutory authorities — 1915(c), 1915(i), 1915(k), and 1115 among them — under which a state may cover home- and community-based long-term services and supports. Which ones a state uses, who qualifies, and what is covered vary by state and by authority 5.

Even where an authority covers assisted living services, room and board generally falls outside it. The rent stays with the family, and that is what most often breaks a plan built on a waiver alone.

This page will not print Minnesota's programme names, current income and asset figures, or waiting-list status. Those move, and a stale number here would mislead more than silence. Minnesota's own Medicaid and aging agencies hold the live rules, and two questions are worth putting to them directly: whether the state's authorities reach assisted living services, and how room and board is handled for someone receiving them. The survey answers neither — it captures private-pay rates, not public reimbursement 1.

And the part families discover too late. States must recover the cost of nursing-facility care, home- and community-based services, and related services from the estates of people who were 55 or older when they received them, subject to mandatory exceptions for a surviving spouse or a minor or disabled child, and to an undue-hardship waiver process 6. Understanding that at the start of a plan is considerably easier than meeting it at the end of one. Naming the year the private money runs out is the real planning task here: the list of options is long while there is runway and very short once there is not.

Common questions

The survey behind most published figures reports ten Minnesota regions rather than one statewide number. Those regions are federal metro areas, and the Twin Cities, Duluth, and the rural residual are genuinely different markets. A statewide average flattens them into a figure that matches none of them.

Because survey regions follow federal Metropolitan Statistical Areas, which cross state lines, and each region is named for its metro's anchor cities rather than the resident's state. Fargo and Grand Forks cover Minnesota's western edge, Sioux Falls the southwestern corner, and La Crosse the southeast. The heading names the metro, not the state.

Usually not. It is a base rate for a one-bedroom unit, and the survey averages the high and low of a community's basic-to-substantial-care range. A care level set by assessment sits on top, roughly 58 percent of communities charge a one-time non-refundable fee at signing, and items like medication management or transport are often billed separately.

No. Medicare does not cover long-term custodial care — help with bathing, dressing, eating, and moving around — in assisted living, a nursing home, or at home when that assistance is the only care needed, and Medigap does not fill the gap. The limit is national, not specific to Minnesota.

It usually changes the care level rather than the rent, and it changes it more than once as supervision and medication needs rise. A quote reflects the assessment on the day it was made, so where cognition is changing, asking what the next two care levels cost tends to be more informative than asking what today's level costs.

States must recover the cost of nursing-facility care, home- and community-based services, and related services from the estates of people who were 55 or older when they received them. There are mandatory exceptions — a surviving spouse, a minor or disabled child — and an undue-hardship waiver process. It is far easier to plan for at the start than to discover at the end.

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When a cost question is really a care-level question

  • —A fall with a head strike or a suspected broken bone, or a second fall inside a month — recurring falls usually mean the supervision being paid for no longer matches what is needed
  • —Confusion, agitation, or new incontinence arriving over hours or days instead of months, which more often reflects an infection or a medication problem than dementia advancing
  • —Leaving the building alone and being unable to find the way back, or being found outside at night
  • —Losing weight without trying, or missing meals and medications repeatedly even though the care plan covers them

A fall involving a head strike, a suspected fracture, or any head injury in someone on a blood thinner needs emergency assessment — call 911 or go to the emergency department rather than waiting for the next scheduled reassessment.

This page explains how assisted living costs are measured and what the public data does and does not show. It is general information rather than medical, legal, or financial advice, and it does not assess any individual's care needs or eligibility for any programme. Costs, Medicaid rules, and state programmes change. Care and payment decisions are worth working through with a clinician, and with Minnesota's own Medicaid and aging agencies for anything touching eligibility.

References

  1. 1.CareScout (Genworth) (2024). Cost of Care Survey 2024. CareScout / Genworth. link ✓The 2024 national median monthly assisted living cost of $5,900, up 10% from $5,350 in 2023, with inflation identified as the leading driver for assisted living and labour cost the leading driver for home care; the methodology (4,610 completed assisted living surveys from 17% of licensed communities; monthly private-pay rate for a one-bedroom unit; rates collected from basic to substantial care with the high-low average used; approximately 58% of communities charging a one-time non-refundable fee; collection July-December 2024; both small group homes and large multi-service communities qualifying as assisted living; more than 70 names or designations in use and fewer than 40% using 'assisted living' in their formal name or licensure designation); and the region structure (431 regions based on 383 federal MSAs, the July 2023 OMB redelineation, regions often including counties from other nearby states, results reported only where collection succeeded) together with the specific Minnesota and Wisconsin region definitions listed in the report.
  2. 2.Genworth Financial / CareScout (2025). Genworth and CareScout Release Cost of Care Survey Results for 2024. Genworth Financial Investor Relations. link ✓The 2024 national median annual assisted living cost of $70,800, a 10% year-over-year increase.
  3. 3.Alzheimer's Association (2024). 2024 Alzheimer's disease facts and figures. Alzheimer's & Dementia (journal of the Alzheimer's Association). doi:10.1002/alz.13809 ✓The estimate that 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and older were living with Alzheimer's dementia in 2024.
  4. 4.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2026). Long-term care coverage. Medicare.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). link ✓That Medicare and most health insurance, including Medigap, do not pay for long-term custodial care — help with activities of daily living — in assisted living, a nursing home, or the community when that is the only care needed.
  5. 5.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Home & Community Based Services Authorities. Medicaid.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). linkThat states may cover home- and community-based long-term services and supports under several Medicaid statutory authorities — including 1915(c), 1915(i), 1915(k) and 1115 — and that eligibility and coverage vary by state and by authority.
  6. 6.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Estate Recovery. Medicaid.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). linkThat states must recover from the estates of deceased Medicaid enrollees aged 55 and older the cost of nursing-facility, home- and community-based, and related services, subject to mandatory exceptions for a surviving spouse or a minor or disabled child and an undue-hardship waiver process.

6 sources, numbered by first appearance. General health information, not medical advice. AI-assisted editorial content — citations link their sources. Editorial policy

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