Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: yes, through Supportive Living Program (SLP), IL Supportive Living Program Waiver (0326.R05.00). Medicaid does not pay the facility’s room and board either way; only the care and service component.
What Illinois covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Supportive Living Program (SLP), IL Supportive Living Program Waiver (0326.R05.00) |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | Yes: “personal care, homemaking, laundry, medication assistance, social and health activities, recreation, and 24-hour staff to meet residents’ scheduled and unscheduled needs.” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Illinois 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. Illinois’s own materials say the same thing directly: “The resident is responsible for paying the cost of room and board at the facility.” (Illinois HFS, Supportive Living Program page).
The waitlist
Not published by the state in the materials reviewed this session.
What you get to keep: the personal needs allowance
$120.00 a month: “The PNA for a person who lives in a SLP setting is $120.” 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.
Paying for care is the harder half
What a waiver covers is only part of the problem, because room and board still has to come from somewhere, and an adviser can look at income, savings and the likely timeline together before a placement decision is made.
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What this doesn’t answer
No effective date was shown for the $120 PNA figure in the DHS policy-manual excerpt read this session. Waitlist/capacity status was not confirmed from a primary source that could be opened this session; the state’s own administrative code PDF (89 Ill. Adm. Code Part 146) was not machine-readable this session.
Sources
Read September 3, 2026.
Same question, other states: Indiana · Alabama.
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.
Related: Illinois’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.