The 7 California assisted living facilities with a Perfect 10 safety score

One of our California safety cluster pieces. See the California assisted living safety report for the statewide context, or the methodology behind the FYI Safety Score.

Out of roughly 7,800 licensed assisted living facilities in California, 7 currently hold a Perfect 10 FYI Safety Score. That's fewer than 0.1% of the state.

The 7 are not the facilities most families would predict. Two are 6-bed family-style care homes in cities most people have never heard of. Two are large branded communities of 118 and 145 beds. One is the highest-rated memory care facility in California. They are spread across 7 different cities, from the Coachella Valley to the Central Valley to the Bay Area. No regional cluster. No brand pattern. No size pattern.

The thing they share isn't visible from a marketing site. It's the state inspection record.

What does a Perfect 10 FYI Safety Score mean?

A Perfect 10 is an earned distinction reserved for facilities with a sustained flawless multi-year record under heavy state inspection. It sits above the 9.0 to 9.9 Excellent band as a separate tier on the FYI Safety Score. Fewer than 0.1% of California assisted living facilities currently qualify.

The Perfect 10 is not awarded for being big, well-marketed, or well-priced. It's awarded for one thing: years of state observation without a single citation or substantiated complaint on the public record. The state agency that licenses and inspects every facility in California (the Community Care Licensing Division) classifies every finding by severity. A Perfect 10 facility has none of them.

If a Perfect 10 facility receives any future citation or substantiated complaint, the badge drops. The score is the record.

Which California assisted living facilities have a Perfect 10 safety score?

Seven facilities currently hold a Perfect 10 in California. Here they are, in alphabetical order, with the per-facility data behind the score.

Click any facility to see the full inspection record and the context that goes with it.

What do California's Perfect 10 facilities have in common?

Less than you would expect. The honest answer is that the Perfect 10 list does not pattern. It cuts across size, brand, geography, and longevity. That is the most interesting thing about it.

A few specifics worth noticing in the data above.

1. The size range is enormous. From 6-bed family-style care homes (Affordable Board and Care, Right Choice La Mesa) to a 145-bed branded community (Brookdale Mirage Inn). Both ends of the California assisted living spectrum are represented. The middle is too: 49, 80, 95, and 118 beds. Safety is not a function of small or large. Each operating model can run a flawless record. Each can also run a troubled one.

2. The geography is genuinely spread out. Seven facilities, seven different cities, no shared metro. Rancho Mirage in the Coachella Valley. Lakeview Terrace in the LA foothills. Carlsbad in coastal San Diego County. La Mesa in inland San Diego. Salida in the Central Valley. Redwood City in the Bay Area. Granite Bay in the Sacramento metro. Perfect 10 is not a regional artifact. It is a per-facility outcome.

3. The state has paid attention. Visit counts across the 7 range from 9 to 18. These aren't facilities the state forgot about. Every one has been inspected by state regulators many times, and the record is still clean.

4. The brand mix is mostly independent. Most of the 7 are independent or small regional operators. Two are part of larger regional brands (Brookdale Mirage Inn under Brookdale Senior Living, Eskaton Lodge Granite Bay under Eskaton). No national chain dominates the list. The most reliable signal of a Perfect 10 is not a national brand badge; it's the per-facility record.

5. One Perfect 10 is also the safest memory care facility in California. Palm Villas in Redwood City is the highest-scored memory care facility in the state, in addition to its Perfect 10 status. For families specifically searching for memory care, the statewide memory care safety report puts Palm Villas in context.

6. Newer facilities can earn it too. Two of the 7 have been licensed for 4 years. That's the floor of what counts as "sustained." But both have been visited by inspectors 9 times each in that window. Time alone doesn't earn a Perfect 10. The record does.

If you came to this list looking for the one type of facility most likely to be a Perfect 10, the data won't give it to you. The list is the answer.

What a Perfect 10 doesn't tell you

A Perfect 10 is a strong starting point. It is not a verdict.

The FYI Safety Score measures regulatory compliance: it tells you what state inspectors have documented. It does not measure staff warmth on a Tuesday afternoon. It does not measure food quality, activity programming, or whether the facility feels like a place your mom could actually live. It does not measure whether the staff who were there last year are still there this year. For the full set of things the score does and doesn't capture, see the companion guide what the FYI Safety Score doesn't measure.

What the Perfect 10 does is hand you a short list of facilities where the public regulatory record is exceptional. That's a real and useful signal. The state has been inside many times and has not had anything significant to write down. That doesn't happen by accident. It's the closest thing the public record gives you to a strong endorsement.

Use it as a gate. Then do the in-person work. The safety vibe check guide walks through what to look for during a tour that the safety score can't see.

What to do if your city isn't on the list

Most California cities have zero Perfect 10 facilities. That's expected. The Perfect 10 list is statewide, and at fewer than 0.1% it skips most local markets entirely.

The next-best starting point is the Excellent band (9.0 to 9.9). Roughly 38% of California assisted living facilities score in the Excellent range. Almost every major California market has multiple Excellent-rated facilities to consider. The per-city safety reports rank the top 15 facilities in each market by score, so you can find your local equivalent of the Perfect 10 list.

The statewide safety report is the spine; the individual city pages are linked from there.

If you find a facility you love during a tour and its score is in the Good (8.0 to 8.9) or Fair (6.0 to 7.9) bands, that's not a stop sign. It's a prompt to ask about specific findings. Pull up the detail page on your phone in the parking lot. Read what the state documented. Then ask the executive director about each finding by date. A facility that takes its record seriously will have an answer ready. One that doesn't, won't.

Browse all California facilities by safety score on the AssistedLiving.fyi map.

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Data: Computed from California Department of Social Services Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) inspection records, ingested into AssistedLiving.fyi as of May 2026. The FYI Safety Score is provided for informational purposes only and is not a guarantee or prediction of the safety, quality, or suitability of any facility. Always visit in person before deciding.