Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: yes, through Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver (LCAL). Medicaid does not pay the facility’s room and board either way; only the care and service component.
What Arkansas covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver (LCAL) |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | Yes: “This home and community-based services waiver program permits Medicaid coverage of assisted living services as described in this manual.” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Arkansas 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. Arkansas’s own materials confirm the same thing: Medicaid, by federal law, may not cover [clients’] room and board except in nursing and intermediate care facilities… Reimbursement is direct care for services only; room and board are to be paid by the client or his or her legal representative. (Arkansas DHS, Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver renewal filing (CMS 1915(c))).
The waitlist
unverified: mechanism confirmed (first-come, first-served up to an approved cap, then a waitlist), but no current 2026 count found : The Living Choices waiver provides for the entrance of all eligible persons on a first-come, first-served basis, once individuals meet all functional and financial eligibility requirements. However, once the [approved] waiver dictates a maximum number of unduplicated beneficiaries who can be served in any waiver year… a waiting list will be implemented.
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 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
The waiver’s approved cap is 1,725 unduplicated participants per waiver year per the renewal filing read this session, but that filing is a multi-year renewal document, not a live enrollment dashboard, so no current (2026) waitlist headcount is reported. No personal needs allowance dollar figure was located in the ~140-page primary document reviewed.
Sources
- Arkansas DHS: Living Choices Assisted Living Waiver renewal filing
- Arkansas DHS: Living Choices Packet
Read September 3, 2026.
Same question, other states: California · Georgia.
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.