Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: yes, through Choices for Care (CFC): Enhanced Residential Care (ERC) option. Medicaid does not pay the facility’s room and board either way; only the care and service component.
What Vermont covers
| Waiver / state plan option | Choices for Care (CFC): Enhanced Residential Care (ERC) option |
|---|---|
| Covers an assisted living setting? | Yes: “This option provides 24-hour care and supervision in approved VT licensed Level III Residential Care Homes or Assisted Living Residences. Services include personal care, housekeeping, meals, activities, nursing oversight and medication management.” |
| Room and board | Never covered by Medicaid, in Vermont 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. Vermont’s own materials say the same thing directly: “CFC reimbursement for ERC services does not include room and board. The individual is responsible for payment of room and board.” (VT DAIL Choices for Care Program Manual, Section IV.8: Enhanced Residential Care (ERC)).
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 the DAIL program manual and the current (9/8/2025) Options At-A-Glance sheet confirm ERC covers Level III Residential Care Homes and Assisted Living Residences and that the individual, not Medicaid, pays room and board. Neither document, nor the DVHA member page, stated a current personal needs allowance dollar figure or a waitlist status for Choices for Care/ERC; a dedicated DAIL personal-needs-allowance page returned a 404 this session, and no waitlist language was found in the sources reviewed, so both fields are marked unverified rather than filled from secondary estimates.
Sources
- VT DAIL Choices for Care Program Manual, Section IV.8 Enhanced Residential Care
- VT Choices for Care Options At-A-Glance (updated 9/8/2025), DAIL/ASD
- DVHA Long-Term Care Medicaid member page
Read September 4, 2026.
Same question, other states: Virginia · Washington.
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: Vermont’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.