Medicaid & Assisted Living in New York: Yes

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: yes, through Assisted Living Program (ALP). Medicaid does not pay the facility’s room and board either way; only the care and service component.

What New York covers

Waiver / state plan option	Assisted Living Program (ALP)
Covers an assisted living setting?	Yes: “ALP provides personal care, room, board, housekeeping, supervision, home health aides, personal emergency response services, nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, medical supplies and equipment, adult day health care, a range of home health services, and the case management services of a registered professional nurse.”
Room and board	Never covered by Medicaid, in New York or any state; see below.

The room-and-board split

Federal law is the floor every state builds on: “The Secretary may by waiver provide that a State plan approved under this subchapter may include as “medical assistance” under such plan payment for part or all of the cost of home or community-based services (other than room and board) approved by the Secretary” (42 U.S.C. §1396n(c)(1), Social Security Act §1915(c)). The words in parentheses do the work: whatever a state’s waiver pays for inside an assisted living community, it is not the rent, the meals, or the room itself. That portion stays the resident’s own to fund, out of income, savings, or a family contribution; the waiver only ever reaches the care and service layer on top of it. New York’s own materials say the same thing directly: “Payment for services provided to eligible MA recipients by the ALP is made through two funding mechanisms: The residential component is paid by the resident to the ALP at the SSI Congregate Care Level II rate established by the Department or at a private pay rate established by the ALP if the resident is ineligible for SSI.” (NYS Medicaid Assisted Living Program (ALP) Manual Policy Guidelines, “Basis of Payment” section (eMedNY Provider Manual)).

The waitlist

Not published by the state in the materials reviewed this session.

What you get to keep: the personal needs allowance

Not published in the materials reviewed this session. This is the amount of a waiver participant’s own income the state lets them keep for personal spending after the rest goes toward the cost of their care; it varies by state because each state sets its own figure inside the federal floor.

What this doesn’t answer

Both waitlist status and the personal needs allowance are unverified: the only capacity figure found (“limited to 4,200 residents”) is on a page last revised August 2014 and describes total program size, not a live waitlist, so it was not treated as current waitlist status. Neither primary document opened stated a specific personal needs allowance dollar figure for ALP residents, so it is left unverified rather than pulling a number from secondary aggregator sites. Everything else is confirmed directly from NYS DOH and the eMedNY ALP manual: that ALP covers room and board as part of its service bundle, and that the resident (not Medicaid) pays the residential/room-and-board component at the SSI Congregate Care Level II rate.

Sources

Read September 4, 2026.

Same question, other states: North Carolina · North Dakota.

General information drawn from each state’s own Medicaid agency and federal statute, not legal, tax or financial advice. Medicaid is administered state by state; waiver names, coverage decisions, waitlists and allowance amounts change by state budget and legislative action. This page cannot see your own state’s current caseload. We are not a law firm, a benefits counselor, or a fiduciary, and this is not personalized advice. We sell nothing on this page and earn nothing from it.

Related: New York’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.

Does Medicaid Pay for Assisted Living in New York?