Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: no, currently. Louisiana’s active elderly/disabled waiver, Community Choices, is a stay-at-home program only. The state did build a waiver meant to cover assisted-living-type “adult residential care” settings; it was repealed January 10, 2022 because it was never approved by CMS, and Louisiana has not replaced it.
What Louisiana covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Community Choices Waiver (CCW), home-based only; the prior Adult Residential Care (ARC) Waiver, which would have covered assisted-living-type settings, was repealed January 10, 2022 for lack of CMS approval |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | No: the Louisiana Department of Health’s Community Choices Waiver page describes a home and community-based program and lists no assisted living service. |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Louisiana 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 Louisiana’s own materials restating this point in the sources read this session; the federal rule above still governs.
The waitlist
No headcount is published in the materials reviewed. The state’s Community Choices Waiver page says that, after its priority groups, everyone else gets a CCW offer on a first-come, first-served basis based on the date they asked for services.
What you get to keep: the personal needs allowance
$45.00 (institutional/facility figure; not an assisted-living figure, since CCW does not cover that setting) a month: LTC Personal Care Needs Allowance: $45.00, effective July 1, 2025 (up from $38). The same chart lists the HCBS maintenance needs allowance as 3 x SSI Federal Benefit Rate. 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
The $45 personal needs allowance is Louisiana’s institutional/facility figure; since the active CCW waiver does not cover an assisted-living setting, there is no genuine Medicaid AL-specific allowance to report and this is stated on the page rather than implied. CCW’s own registry uses tiered priority groups but no current registry headcount was found in a primary source this session.
Figures verified against the Louisiana Department of Health Community Choices Waiver page, the Louisiana Medicaid Z-700 chart (reissued January 7, 2026), and 42 U.S.C. 1396n(c)(1) on September 30, 2026; the Community Choices Waiver fact sheet PDF (unreadable image) and the January 10, 2022 repeal date of the Adult Residential Care Waiver were not re-checked.
Sources
- Louisiana LDH: Community Choices Waiver fact sheet, reissued Feb. 26, 2026
- Louisiana Medicaid: Z-700 rate/allowance chart, reissued Jan. 7, 2026
Read September 3, 2026.
Same question, other states: Maine · Massachusetts.
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: Louisiana’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.