Safest assisted living in Pasadena, ranked by inspection data

This is one of our California city safety reports. See the other markets or read the methodology behind the FYI Safety Score.

The safest assisted living facility in Pasadena is El Molino Rose Villa, a 6-bed small care home with an FYI Safety Score of 9.6. It has 4 state inspections on record, zero citations, and zero substantiated complaints across 10 years of licensing.

But the larger story for Pasadena is the market itself. The average score across 32 Pasadena facilities is 6.85, notably below the California state average. Only 4 facilities score in the Excellent band. The supply of strong options is thinner here than in most other California cities of similar size.

Below are the 15 facilities at the top of the Pasadena ranking and how the rest of the market looks once you zoom out. The data was pulled from California state inspection records in May 2026.

Pasadena has 32 licensed assisted living facilities, a smaller pool than nearby LA County cities. The 15 below represent nearly half of the entire local market sorted by safety score, so the rank position matters: a #15 in Pasadena isn't comparable to a #15 in LA.

The 15 strongest assisted living facilities in Pasadena

The ranking is the FYI Safety Score on a 1.0 to 10.0 scale, computed from the public state inspection record. Because Pasadena's pool is small, this represents the upper half of the entire local market.

Two things worth noticing.

First, only the top facility is clean (zero across the board). After #1, even the top of the Pasadena list has some accumulated citations and complaints in the record. The market simply doesn't have many facilities with the kind of multi-year, multi-inspection clean records we see at the top of other California cities.

Second, the scores fall quickly. By #10 the score is dropping into the 9.0s only with notable findings on the record. Pasadena families researching care should be especially careful to read the underlying inspection records rather than relying on score alone.

What the distribution looks like across the rest of Pasadena

Only about 31% of Pasadena facilities score Good or Excellent, the lowest concentration of strong facilities in any market we've ranked. About 22% score Poor or Severe. The Fair band is large; nearly half the market sits in the 6.0-to-7.9 range, where individual records vary widely.

The other end of the list

We publish this part for the same reason we publish the top. A facility on this list isn't necessarily dangerous today. It's a facility where the public record contains enough recent findings that the right move is to dig into the raw inspection history and ask specific questions before deciding.

The Pasadena concerning list includes Pasadena Villa Senior Living with 177 state inspections on record. That's the highest state visit count of any facility in our 19-city analysis. The inspection density alone tells you something: the state has been actively tracking this facility for a long time, and the 28 Type A citations and 39 substantiated complaints suggest persistent issues.

If you're looking at one of these and the score is concerning, the right move is to click through, read the record, then call the facility and ask them directly what happened and what changed. A facility that owns its history and can speak specifically to corrective actions is in a very different position than one that doesn't.

How does Pasadena compare to the rest of California?

Pasadena is well below the state average. The average score across 32 facilities is 6.85, the second-lowest in our 19-city analysis (after Fremont at 5.97).

A few other California cities are worth a comparison: Modesto sits at 8.34 (highest among major CA cities), San Diego and Fresno at 8.02 (well above), Riverside at 7.99 with zero severely-rated facilities, and Bakersfield at 7.09 (also below average but higher than Pasadena).

How to use this list

The score is the gut check. The visit is the field test. The conversations with current residents and frontline staff are the verification. A high score is not a guarantee, and a low score is not a verdict. They're starting points for asking the right questions.

In a market like Pasadena where the average is lower, the work of reading the underlying records matters more. The top of the list still represents strong options, but the middle warrants more scrutiny than it would in a stronger market.

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

For families researching what to do with this information once they have it, the companion guides are Why Yelp reviews don't predict quality of care and How to do a safety vibe check without trusting marketing.

---

Data: Computed from California Department of Social Services Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) inspection records, ingested into AssistedLiving.fyi. Safety scores reflect the inspection record as of May 2026 and may change as new visits are documented. 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.