Safest assisted living in San Francisco, 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 San Francisco is The Carlisle-Ivy Signature Living, a 130-bed community with an FYI Safety Score of 9.7. It has 10 state inspections on record across 19 years of licensing, zero citations, and zero substantiated complaints. San Francisco Towers sits right alongside at 9.7, with a 350-bed footprint and 28 years of clean record.

That's unusual. In most California cities we've analyzed, the top of the safety ranking is dominated by small 6-bed care homes. In San Francisco, the urban geography means most large communities and even most small operators sit in dense buildings, and the strongest options at the top of the ranking are mid-to-large facilities with multi-decade records.

Below are the 15 facilities at the top of the San Francisco 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.

San Francisco has 51 licensed assisted living facilities, with a total licensed capacity of around 3,400 beds.

The 15 safest assisted living facilities in San Francisco

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.

Two things worth noticing.

First, the top of San Francisco's list is mostly larger communities (100+ beds) rather than the small care homes that dominate elsewhere. That's a real signal about how the city's market is structured. If you're looking for a community-style facility in SF rather than a small home, the top of this list is where to start.

Second, several of these communities have multi-decade licensing histories with clean records. Maintaining a clean record at scale, in an urban market, over decades, requires sustained operational discipline. These are facilities to take seriously.

What the distribution looks like across the rest of San Francisco

A list of 15 facilities is a starting point, not a market summary. Here's what the full distribution actually looks like across all 51 San Francisco facilities.

About 49% of SF facilities score Good or Excellent. About 16% score Poor or Severe. The market has a solid top but a meaningful middle and bottom worth checking facility-by-facility.

There are zero Perfect 10 facilities in San Francisco. 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.

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 San Francisco compare to the rest of California?

San Francisco is slightly below the state average. The average score across 51 SF facilities is 7.62. What's distinctive about the city isn't the average but the shape: large urban communities at the top instead of small homes, and a notably thin pool overall compared to the population.

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 (above average), Riverside at 7.99 with zero severely-rated facilities, and Sacramento at 7.41 (notably below).

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 San Francisco 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.