Senior living & memory care
What Memory Care Costs, State by State
SaveMemory care pricing is assisted living plus a differential for a secured unit and denser staffing. This guide gathers what each state page publishes — a figure where a survey reports one — and lists the questions that predict the real monthly bill, including the one families most regret not asking.
Last updated: August 2026History
Where the differential comes from
A memory care unit is secured, so residents can move freely without leaving the building unaccompanied. It is staffed more densely than assisted living, often with dementia-specific training, and programming runs through the day because unstructured time is when distress builds.
That is what the differential pays for. It is worth asking the community to name its actual daytime and overnight staffing ratios, because the differential is charged whether or not the ratio is genuinely different.
What memory care costs by state
Each row is that state's own published summary. Several states report that no survey measures memory care as its own category — where that is the row, the absence of a number is the finding, and the questions below are how you get one.
| State | What the state's own guide reported |
|---|---|
| Alabama | No published survey measures memory care as its own category, in Alabama or anywhere else. The national cost survey families are pointed to prices assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care. Memory care is not among them. |
| Alaska | Alaska has no published memory care price, and the data gap is wider here than almost anywhere. The national cost survey does not measure memory care in any state, and in Alaska it prices only two named regions: Anchorage, and Fairbanks with College. |
| Arizona | Arizona has no published memory care price, because no survey collects one. The national cost survey prices assisted living, nursing homes, home care and adult day care, and stops there. |
| Arkansas | No survey publishes a memory care median for Arkansas. What exists is the state's assisted living median, which sits well below the national figure, and the premium a community charges on top of it for a secured dementia unit. |
| California | California prices memory care above the national assisted living median, but the state median is the least useful number in this search: the same care costs radically different amounts in the Bay Area and the Central Valley. |
| Colorado | Colorado's assisted living median sits close to the national figure, which makes the statewide number unusually misleading here: Denver, the mountain resort counties, and the Eastern Plains are three different price worlds averaged into one. |
| Connecticut | Connecticut is one of the most expensive states in the country for assisted living, and memory care is priced above that. But the structure matters more than the number here, because Connecticut is unusual: it does not license assisted living as a building. |
| Delaware | Delaware memory care is billed as an assisted living apartment plus a dementia care charge, and no public survey publishes a Delaware memory care median. |
| Florida | Florida memory care is priced building by building, but the number that decides your family's next three years is not the rent — it is the licence. A standard assisted living licence, an extended congregate care licence, and a limited nursing services licence permit a Florida facility to keep residents at different levels of need. |
| Georgia | Georgia licenses two different things that both get sold as memory care: personal care homes and assisted living communities. They are not the same licence, they do not permit the same care, and they do not carry the same price. |
| Hawaii | Memory care in Hawaii is quoted as a single monthly rate somewhere between the state's assisted-living pricing and its nursing-home pricing, and no public survey publishes a Hawaii memory-care median to check that quote against. |
| Idaho | Memory care in Idaho is quoted as one monthly rate, and there is no published Idaho memory-care median to measure it against — the state cost figures everyone cites price assisted living, not memory care. In practice Idaho is two markets. |
| Illinois | Illinois memory care is quoted as one monthly rate, and unlike most states Illinois has a second answer: the Supportive Living Program, a Medicaid route that pays for assisted-living-style care, including settings designated for dementia. |
| Indiana | Indiana memory care is quoted as one all-in monthly rate, and Indiana is a comparatively low-cost state with two corners that are not. Northwest Indiana prices against Chicago; the southern edge prices against Louisville. |
| Iowa | No public survey prints a memory care median for Iowa. The 2024 Cost of Care Survey prices assisted living, nursing homes, home care and adult day — memory care is not one of its categories. What Iowa does have is two sourced posts: assisted living at $62,202 a year, or $5,184 a month, and a nursing home semi-private room at $107,128. |
| Kansas | Kansas assisted living has a median of $71,400 a year, or $5,950 a month, which lands within $600 of the national median and ranks 26th of 51 — the middle state. Memory care itself is not priced by any national survey, so that assisted living figure is the anchor a Kansas quote gets built from. |
| Kentucky | Kentucky is one of the least expensive states in which to begin. Its assisted living median is $58,794 a year — $4,900 a month, ranking 43rd of 51 — roughly $12,000 below the national figure. No survey prices memory care itself, so that is the anchor a Kentucky quote gets built on. |
| Louisiana | Louisiana has the lowest paid home care rates in the country: $22 an hour for a home health aide and $20 for homemaker services, both ranked 51st of 51. Assisted living runs $61,200 a year, or $5,100 a month. No survey prices memory care itself, so that assisted living figure is the anchor. |
| Maine | No survey publishes a memory care rate for Maine. The Cost of Care Survey prices assisted living, nursing homes, home care and adult day care — memory care is not one of its categories. |
| Maryland | Maryland is surveyed in six regions, and two of them are named for Washington and Philadelphia rather than anywhere in Maryland. So the state's published figure is partly a measure of other metros. |
| Massachusetts | Massachusetts is surveyed in eight regions — and three of them, including Boston's, appear in a neighbouring state's list as well. Memory care is not surveyed at all: the categories are assisted living, nursing homes, home care and adult day care. |
| Michigan | Michigan is sliced into sixteen survey regions, from Detroit to Traverse City — four times the resolution Maine gets. That means a Michigan family can read a near-local figure instead of a state blur. |
| Minnesota | Memory care in Minnesota is priced as assisted living plus a dementia premium, because no major cost survey prices memory care on its own. Start from Minnesota's assisted living median, then add for the locked perimeter, the higher staffing ratio and the dementia-trained shift. |
| Mississippi | Mississippi carries some of the lowest long-term care costs in the country, and memory care there is still the most expensive line most families have ever paid. No survey prices memory care separately — it is assisted living plus a dementia premium. |
| Missouri | Missouri has two assisted living licenses, and which one a building holds does more to set the price than the address does. Memory care is not a licensed category here — it is a service layered on a residential care facility or an assisted living facility rate. |
| Montana | Montana licenses assisted living in three categories, and memory care lives in the third. A Category C endorsement covers residents with severe cognitive impairment, so in Montana the dementia premium attaches to a real regulatory tier. |
| Nebraska | No cost survey publishes a memory care median for Nebraska. The large national surveys price assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care — memory care is not a separate line. |
| Nevada | Nevada is unusual: it does not license memory care as a facility type. It licenses residential facilities for groups, then adds an endorsement authorizing a facility to care for people with Alzheimer's disease. |
| New Hampshire | New Hampshire has no memory-care license. It licenses assisted living residences under He-P 804, and supported residential health care facilities — which carry licensed medical staff around the clock — under He-P 805. Memory care runs inside one of those. |
| New Jersey | New Jersey does something almost no other state does: it requires assisted living residences and comprehensive personal care homes licensed since September 2001 to reach at least 10 percent Medicaid occupancy within three years, and hold it. |
| New Mexico | New Mexico has no published memory care median, because the national cost surveys do not price memory care as its own category. What families here actually pay is an adult residential care base rate plus a dementia care charge that each community sets for itself. |
| New York | New York is one of the few states where memory care is a licensure category rather than a marketing word. A community serving people with dementia holds a Special Needs Assisted Living Residence certificate on top of its assisted living residence license. |
| North Carolina | North Carolina licenses adult care homes and family care homes, not memory care, and a dementia unit inside one is called a special care unit. What a family pays is a base rate for the room plus a care charge, and North Carolina is unusual in publishing a star rating for those homes — a public number, built from inspection history, that most states never produce for assisted living at all. |
| North Dakota | North Dakota is one of the only states with a licensed tier between assisted living and the nursing home: basic care. A person with dementia here may be priced into an assisted living facility, a basic care facility, or a nursing home, and the three are funded by three different programs. |
| Ohio | Ohio memory care arrives as one monthly number, but it is assembled from three: base rent for the apartment, a care-level charge that climbs as dementia advances, and a dementia differential for the secured unit and its staffing. |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma prices memory care as assisted living plus a dementia premium, and the premium is the part nobody itemizes unless asked. The state median is a poor guide either way: outside the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metros, the binding constraint is often not price at all but whether a secured unit exists within an hour of the family. |
| Oregon | Oregon is one of the few states where "memory care" is a regulated term rather than a marketing one: a community cannot call itself that without a memory care endorsement, which carries required staffing, training, and building standards. |
| Pennsylvania | The building most Pennsylvania families tour and call assisted living is legally a personal care home — a different license, with different rules and a different relationship to Medicaid. Memory care usually sits as a secured unit inside one. |
| Rhode Island | Memory care in Rhode Island is priced as an assisted living rate plus a dementia premium, and no public survey publishes that combined number for this state. |
| South Carolina | South Carolina does not license a building called memory care. It licenses community residential care facilities, and memory care is something a CRCF offers inside that license — which is why the price is set by the residence rather than by any published state figure. |
| South Dakota | In much of South Dakota the memory care question is not which building but which town, and the honest first cost is the drive. Outside Sioux Falls and Rapid City, a county may hold one long-term care building rather than a choice of three, and dementia care there often happens inside a nursing home — a different license and a substantially higher price than assisted living. |
| Tennessee | A Tennessee memory care price is an assisted living base plus a dementia premium the residence sets itself, and no survey publishes that combined figure for this state. |
| Texas | Memory care in Texas is priced as assisted living plus a dementia premium, and no public survey publishes a Texas memory care median — the big cost surveys price assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care, not memory care. |
| Utah | Memory care in Utah is priced as assisted living plus a dementia premium, and no survey measures that premium — the major cost surveys price assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care, and memory care is not among them. |
| Vermont | Memory care in Vermont is priced as residential care plus a dementia premium, and no survey publishes a Vermont memory care median — the major cost surveys measure assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care, not memory care. |
| Virginia | Memory care in Virginia is priced as assisted living plus a dementia premium, and no survey publishes a Virginia memory care median — the major cost surveys measure assisted living, nursing homes, home care, and adult day care, not memory care. |
| Washington | No survey publishes a memory care median for Washington, and few communities quote a firm number before an assessment. What you can anchor to is arithmetic: memory care is priced as assisted living plus a dementia-care premium, so the published assisted living median is a floor to reason from rather than a number to expect. |
| West Virginia | The cost survey that families quote has a West Virginia line for assisted living, and no line at all for memory care — nowhere in the country does. What that leaves you with here is the state's own arithmetic: a low-wage labor market that holds rates down, an older population than almost any state, and almost no supply concentrated anywhere, because no West Virginia city holds fifty thousand people. |
| Wisconsin | Wisconsin does not have one assisted living price because it does not have one assisted living license. The state licenses three separate residential settings — adult family homes, community-based residential facilities, and residential care apartment complexes — and most memory care sits in the middle one. |
| Wyoming | Wyoming's memory care price is set by how little of it there is. In the least populous state in the country, spread across twenty-three counties and nearly a hundred thousand square miles, the first question is not what memory care costs but whether there is any within an hour of your parent. |
Every figure above is carried across from the state guide it came from, unchanged. Where a row quotes a national range or median instead of a figure of its own, that is the state page's own wording carried across with it — no state has a state-specific survey figure invented for it here. The sources behind these numbers are listed at the end of this guide 1Ref 1CareScout (Genworth) (2024).Cost of Care Survey 2024.Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 50 of them..
What actually moves the monthly bill
Three levers, in order of size. Geography: a metro suburb and a rural county in the same state can differ by thousands a month. Care level: as dementia advances, help with transfers, incontinence and eating moves a resident up tiers, and the increase is usually annual-plus-tier, not annual alone. Room type: a shared room is materially cheaper than a private one and is the most common lever families have not considered.
All-inclusive pricing exists and is worth asking for by name — it trades a higher starting number for protection against tier increases as the disease progresses.
Getting to a real monthly number
Use your state's figure as a starting band, then get three written quotes in the specific county with the tier schedule attached. Ask what happens when the resident needs two-person transfers, and ask what discharge criteria the community has — the point at which they will say they can no longer care for someone is the question families most regret not asking.
Related: what assisted living costs · whether Medicaid covers it.
Common questions
Related
Senior living & memory care
Why Memory Care Costs More Than Assisted LivingSenior living & memory care
What to Ask on a Memory Care TourSenior living & memory care
What Triggers the Move to Memory Care
Say it back
How would you explain this to someone you love?
Two or three sentences, just as you’d say it. Gale reflects back what you focused on — a mirror, not a quiz.
When a Move Cannot Wait
- —Wandering that has led to leaving the home unaccompanied
- —Aggression or distress the caregiver cannot safely manage
- —A caregiver whose own health is failing under the load
Sudden confusion beyond the person's baseline, a fall with a head injury, or trouble breathing is an emergency: call 911. A sudden change in a person with dementia is often a treatable illness such as an infection, not the disease progressing.
This article covers typical memory care costs by state. It is general information, not medical or financial advice; confirm current pricing with communities in your area.
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References
- 1.CareScout (Genworth) (2024). Cost of Care Survey 2024. CareScout / Genworth. link ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 50 of them.
- 2.Genworth Financial / CareScout (2025). Genworth and CareScout Release Cost of Care Survey Results for 2024. Genworth Financial Investor Relations. link ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 50 of them.
- 3.HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) (2005). Medicaid Estate Recovery. HHS ASPE. link ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 45 of them.
- 4.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 ✓Source carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 43 of them.
- 5.Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (2025). Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly Benefits. Medicaid.gov (U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services). linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 33 of them.
- 6.Caffrey C, Sengupta M (National Center for Health Statistics, CDC) (2022). Variation in Residential Care Community Resident Characteristics, by Size of Community: United States, 2020. NCHS Data Brief No. 454, CDC. linkSource carried forward from the state pages consolidated here; it is cited by 32 of them.
6 sources, numbered by first appearance. General health information, not medical advice. AI-assisted editorial content — citations link their sources. Editorial policy