Safest assisted living in Sacramento, 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 Sacramento is Young at Heart RCFE No.3 INC, a 6-bed small care home with an FYI Safety Score of 9.7. It has 11 state inspections on record, zero citations, and zero substantiated complaints. What's unusual: three of its sister facilities (Young at Heart RCFE No.2, No.4, and No.5) also sit in Sacramento's top 15, all with identical clean records. One operator, four of the top 15 spots.

Below are the 15 facilities at the top of the Sacramento ranking, what separates them from each other, and how the rest of the market looks once you zoom out. The data was pulled from California state inspection records in May 2026.

Sacramento has 200 licensed assisted living facilities, the largest count of any city in our analysis so far. Most are small care homes; the city's licensed capacity is around 3,700 beds total.

The 15 safest assisted living facilities in Sacramento

The ranking is the FYI Safety Score on a 1.0 to 10.0 scale, computed from the public state inspection record. The "Findings" column is the cleanest summary of the record: Type A citations, then Type B citations, then substantiated complaints. The top 15 read zero across the board.

Two things worth noticing.

First, the Young at Heart RCFE pattern. Four of the top 15 spots are held by the same operator running multiple small homes. That's a real signal: an operator that maintains clean records across multiple locations has built something repeatable, not lucky. Worth a closer look if you're considering any one of them.

Second, none of the top 15 have a particularly long inspection history. Most are in the 3-to-17-year range, with the longest at 21 years. Sacramento's safest facilities tend to be relatively newer to the state record, which means their scores reflect a real clean stretch but a shorter one than you'd see in older markets like LA, where some top facilities have 30+ years of documented record.

What the distribution looks like across the rest of Sacramento

A list of 15 facilities is a starting point, not a market summary. Here's what the full distribution actually looks like across all 200 Sacramento facilities.

Roughly half of Sacramento's facilities (54%) score Good or Excellent. About 1 in 5 (23%) scores Poor or Severe, which is a notably worse distribution than most of the other California cities we've analyzed. The 24 facilities scoring Severe is the highest count in our 10-city set, even though Sacramento isn't the largest market by population.

There are zero Perfect 10 facilities in Sacramento. Perfect 10 is an earned distinction reserved for facilities with at least 5 years of inspection history, at least 10 state visits, zero citations across the entire record, and zero substantiated complaints. It's rare statewide; fewer than 0.1% of California facilities qualify.

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 Sacramento concerning list is heavier than most California cities we've looked at. Several of these facilities have hundreds of state visits documenting persistent issues over multiple years. Greenhaven Estates alone has 98 state inspections on record. That kind of inspection density is itself a signal: the state visits more often when there's a pattern worth watching.

If you're looking at one of these facilities 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 different position than one that doesn't.

How does Sacramento compare to the rest of California?

Sacramento is below the California state average. The average score across 200 Sacramento facilities is 7.41; the state average across all ~7,800 published California facilities is closer to 8. Sacramento is one of the weaker markets we've ranked.

This doesn't mean Sacramento doesn't have great facilities. The top 15 are real and they're as clean as facilities anywhere else in the state. What it means is that the bottom of Sacramento's market is heavier than most other major California cities. The variation between the best and worst Sacramento facilities is unusually large, which is why the facility-by-facility detail matters even more here than in other markets.

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

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.

If you're researching a specific Sacramento facility, the fastest path is just to search the site for the name. You'll get the score, the plain-language summary of the record, the raw counts, the address, photos where we have them, and pricing if it's been verified or published. All of that without entering a phone number or filling out a form.

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.

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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.