Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: no. Virginia’s Medicaid program does not currently pay for services delivered inside an assisted living / residential care setting; its HCBS waiver dollars go to other settings instead.
What Virginia covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Commonwealth Coordinated Care Plus (CCC Plus) Waiver [1915(c), 12VAC30-120-900 et seq.] |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | No: “Who are not residents of nursing facilities (licensed by the Virginia Department of Health), or assisted living facilities (licensed by DSS) that serve 5 or more” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Virginia 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. We did not find Virginia’s own materials restating this point in the sources read this session; the federal rule above still governs.
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
Virginia’s current 1915(c) HCBS waiver, CCC Plus, does not reach assisted living: its covered-services list contains no assisted-living or residential service, and its own eligibility criteria affirmatively exclude residents of assisted living facilities licensed by DSS that serve 5+ people. Virginia previously ran a separate Alzheimer’s Assisted Living (AAL) Waiver reaching Auxiliary-Grant ALF residents with dementia, but its governing regulation (12VAC30-120-1620) shows as repealed effective March 3, 2022 in the Virginia Administrative Code, and we could not confirm this session whether/how that population is now served, so we did not treat AAL as Virginia’s current answer. Room-and-board language, waitlist status, and personal needs allowance were not found in the CCC Plus sources reviewed and are marked unverified rather than inferred from the (out-of-scope, non-Medicaid) Auxiliary Grant program.
Sources
- 12VAC30-120-924, Covered services; limits on covered services: Virginia Administrative Code
- CCC Plus Waiver Provider Manual, Chapter IV: Covered Services and Limitations (updated 12/29/23), DMAS
- 12VAC30-120-1620 (Repealed eff. 3/3/2022): Virginia Administrative Code
Read September 4, 2026.
Same question, other states: Washington · West Virginia.
Related: what assisted living actually costs · assisted living vs. staying home vs. a CCRC · why home care has a waitlist and a nursing home doesn’t.
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.