Safest assisted living in Santa Ana, ranked by inspection data
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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 Santa Ana is Guardian Angels Homes II, a 6-bed small care home with an FYI Safety Score of 9.6. It has 4 state inspections on record across 19 years of licensing, zero citations, and zero substantiated complaints. Several other Santa Ana small homes follow closely with similar profiles.
Below are the 15 facilities at the top of the Santa Ana 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.
Santa Ana has 35 licensed assisted living facilities, mostly small care homes with a few larger communities. A note on geography: this list covers only the City of Santa Ana itself. Nearby Anaheim, Irvine, and other Orange County cities have their own facility rosters and their own lists.
The 15 safest assisted living facilities in Santa Ana
The ranking is the FYI Safety Score on a 1.0 to 10.0 scale, computed from the public state inspection record.
| # | Facility | Score | State visits | Years licensed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guardian Angels Homes II (6 beds) | 9.6 | 4 | 19 |
| 2 | Rose Garden Villa (6 beds) | 9.6 | 6 | 7 |
| 3 | Bubbe & Zayde's Place V (6 beds) | 9.6 | 5 | 17 |
| 4 | Bubbe & Zayde's Place III (6 beds) | 9.6 | 5 | 24 |
| 5 | Casa Palma (6 beds) | 9.6 | 5 | 4 |
| 6 | Sunshine Days For the Elderly (6 beds) | 9.6 | 8 | 5 |
| 7 | Guardian Angels Homes IV (6 beds) | 9.6 | 5 | 19 |
| 8 | Bubbe & Zayde's Place II (6 beds) | 9.6 | 5 | 25 |
| 9 | Garden of Joy Guest Home (6 beds) | 9.5 | 4 | 8 |
| 10 | Devoted Family Care Home (6 beds) | 9.5 | 3 | 2 |
| 11 | Guardian Angels Homes III (6 beds) | 9.5 | 4 | 19 |
| 12 | Forever Young Memory Care (6 beds) | 9.5 | 3 | 9 |
| 13 | Bubbe & Zayde's Place IV (6 beds) | 9.5 | 4 | 22 |
| 14 | Grace's Home #2 (6 beds) | 9.5 | 3 | 17 |
| 15 | Guardian Angels Homes I (6 beds) | 9.4 | 8 | 19 |
Scores reflect citation history, complaint patterns, and recency — see our methodology. Linked facility names open the full inspection record.
Two things worth noticing.
First, every facility in the Santa Ana top 15 is a 6-bed small care home with zero findings. The top tier of this market is uniformly small homes.
Second, Santa Ana's small market means the top 15 represents a meaningful share of the total. If you're researching assisted living in Santa Ana specifically, this list is essentially the whole strongest tier of the local market.
What the distribution looks like across the rest of Santa Ana
| Score | What it means | Facilities | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9.0–9.9 | Excellent. Strong record, no significant recent findings | 19 | 54% |
| 8.0–8.9 | Good. Minor history, recent record is clean | 2 | 6% |
| 6.0–7.9 | Fair. Some recent findings worth asking about | 9 | 26% |
| 4.0–5.9 | Poor. Substantial recent record | 2 | 6% |
| <4.0 | Severe. Concerning pattern, dig into the raw record | 3 | 9% |
About 60% of Santa Ana facilities score Good or Excellent, well above the state average. 14% score Poor or Severe. The market is top-heavy in the right way: most of the local supply is rated Excellent.
There are zero Perfect 10 facilities in Santa Ana. 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.
| # | Facility | Score | Findings | State visits | Years licensed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Hills of Highland (6 beds) | 1.0 | 9 / 12 / 5 | 18 | 1 |
| 2 | Town & Country (328 beds) | 2.6 | 4 / 8 / 4 | 36 | 50 |
| 3 | Willow View Gardens Memory Care & Assisted Living (130 beds) | 3.7 | 6 / 11 / 11 | 42 | 3 |
Findings column: Type A citations / Type B citations / substantiated complaints. Scores also reflect recency weighting — see our methodology.
Santa Ana's concerning list includes Town & Country, a 328-bed community licensed for 50 years with a current score of 2.6. A long-running facility with a low current score usually tells a more nuanced story than the headline number suggests; the inspection record will show whether the issues are concentrated in a recent period or distributed across the history. Worth digging into the detail page before judging.
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.
How does Santa Ana compare to the rest of California?
Santa Ana is above the state average. The average score across 35 facilities is 8.08, similar to San Diego and Fresno. Within Orange County, it ranks similarly to Anaheim by quality but has a smaller pool.
A few other California cities are worth a comparison: Modesto sits at 8.34 (highest among major CA cities), Anaheim at 7.61 (in the same county but slightly lower), 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 Santa Ana facility, the fastest path is just to search the site for the name.
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.
Frequently asked questions
What is the safest assisted living facility in Santa Ana?
Among the 35 licensed assisted living facilities in Santa Ana, the highest FYI Safety Score is held by Guardian Angels Homes II, a 6-bed small care home scoring 9.6 with zero citations and zero substantiated complaints across 4 state inspections over 19 years of licensing.
How many assisted living facilities are in Santa Ana?
There are 35 licensed assisted living facilities in Santa Ana. The market is smaller than nearby Anaheim by count but with a similar mix of small care homes and a few larger communities.
Is Santa Ana a safe market for assisted living?
Santa Ana has an above-average safety profile. The average FYI Safety Score across 35 facilities is 8.08, above the California state average. 3 facilities score in the Severe range, including some of the larger memory care and standard communities.
How is the FYI Safety Score calculated?
The FYI Safety Score is a 1.0 to 10.0 rating computed from California Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD) inspection records. It weighs three components: Type A citations (immediate-risk violations), Type B citations (less severe violations), and substantiated complaints. Recent findings count more than older ones. The full methodology is at assistedliving.fyi/safety-score. No facility can pay to improve their score.
What does a low safety score actually mean?
A low score reflects what state inspectors have documented over years of visits: citations, substantiated complaints, severity, and recency. It does not necessarily mean a facility is unsafe today. But it does mean the public record contains enough findings that families should ask specific questions and review the underlying inspection reports before deciding.
About the author
Steve Selzer is the founder of AssistedLiving.fyi. He started this work while searching for assisted living for his mom, who has dementia, after running into the same opaque pricing, sales calls, and impossible-to-read inspection records that every family in the same situation runs into. The site exists to make the information families actually need easier to find.