California RCFE data

How Often California's Small RCFEs Are Cited

By Sevana Care · Checked against the state's own file on Oct 18, 2026

One in four small California RCFEs open for the whole five years to October 2026 had no citation on record. Small means licensed for 1 to 6 beds, and "on record" means in the state's own licensing file, the source of every figure here ^[1]^[2].

No citation on record: 1 in 4; Small homes open all five years with none in the state's file.; 924 of 3,680 homes (25.1%).
No Type A on record: 44%; Small homes open all five years with no Type A citation.; 1,616 of 3,680 homes (43.9%).
Typical home: 3; Citations at a typical small home that stayed open all five years.; The median of 3,680 homes over the five years.
Inspection visits: 7 in 10; Visits we could count with nothing due in 30 days. Not a citation count.; 15,546 of 21,561 visits (72.1%), September 2021 to August 2026. Leaves out pending homes, visits close together and mismatched records.

Five years of citations at small homes

Of the 3,680 small homes open all five years, 1,616 (44%) had no Type A, the state's most serious kind of citation ^[4]. The typical home had 3 citations, and the most-cited 10% of homes had 44% of all citations.

How many citations each small home had in five years

None25.1% (924 homes)
1 to 222.3%
3 to 519.5%
6 to 1016.5%
11 to 2011.2%
21 or more5.3%

Share of the 3,680 small homes open all five years, September 2021 to October 2026. The 924 with none on record are about one in four.

Inspection visits and correction due dates

About 7 in 10 inspection visits at small homes, 15,546 of 21,561, had no correction due in the 30 days after. The file never says which visit led to a citation, so this is a reading of due dates, not a count of citations.

Inspection visits at small homes, and whether a correction came due in the next 30 days

Nothing due in the next 30 days72.1% (15,546 visits)
A correction due in the next 30 days27.9% (6,015 visits)

21,561 visits, September 2021 to August 2026, a reading of due dates, not a count of citations. We left out visits with another visit within 30 days, and homes whose citation and due-date lists do not match.

Per home and per bed

Among homes open all five years, a small home averaged 0.4 Type A citations a year, against 0.86 at homes with 50 or more beds. Per 100 licensed beds, not per resident, it runs the other way: 6.79 a year at small homes against 0.55, about 12 times as many.

Type A citations a year, by home size

Per home

1-6 beds0.400 (3,680 homes)
7-15 beds0.592 (224 homes)
16-49 beds0.768 (187 homes)
50 or more beds0.858 (713 homes)

Per 100 licensed beds

1-6 beds6.79
7-15 beds4.95
16-49 beds2.29
50 or more beds0.55

4,804 homes open all 5.09 years to October 2026, counting licensed beds today, not residents. The two groups use different scales, and one home with 16 to 49 beds has unreadable totals, so that group's two rates may be low.

Earlier citations and later ones

Of small homes open all five years with no citation due in 2022-2023, 54% had none due in 2024-2025; with six or more, 14% did. The two periods line up, but the file cannot show that anything an owner does changes the next record.

No citation due in 2024-2025, by how many were due in 2022-2023

None (2,019 homes)54%
1 to 2 (871 homes)37%
3 to 5 (415 homes)27%
6 or more (313 homes)14%

3,618 of the 3,680 small homes open all five years; we left out 62 whose citation and due-date lists differ in length. Each year is the year a correction was due.

How we counted

The file

We used the state's Residential Elder Care file ^[1]^[2], dated October 11, 2026. The state does not guarantee that these records are accurate or complete ^[3].

13,301 rows.
SHA-256 checksum 961343537766adc0fcfafd4d82a7a49bc6811e37dfd85bac9d995000540b3efe.

Small home, five years

A small home is licensed for 1 to 6 beds. A home stayed open all five years if it was licensed before September 9, 2021 and listed as licensed or on probation in the file.

The five years run from September 9, 2021 to the file's date, which is 5.09 years.
That gives 4,804 homes, 3,680 of them small.
The license record cannot show whether a home paused in between.

Homes that closed

The file marks 2,019 small homes licensed before September 9, 2021 as closed during the five years. They are left out of the figures for homes that stayed open all five years, though the inspection-visit figures include them.

How closed homes compare

Per home per year, the homes that stayed open had fewer citations on record than the homes that closed. The groups differ, and so does the time each was open, so this does not show that closing changes anything.

Closed homes, while open: 0.739 Type A citations and 1.740 citations in all per home per year.
Homes that stayed open: 0.400 and 1.102.
So the closed homes' rates were 85% and 58% higher.
Some closure records may also be a change of licensee.

Citations

We count each Type A or Type B citation in the file's totals, so one visit can produce several. An empty record does not prove a home was never cited.

The most-cited 10% (368 homes) had 9,000 of the 20,626 citations.
For 13 of the 924 homes with no citation on record, the file's separate citation list shows entries.
If both have to show none, the count is 911 (24.8%), still about one in four.

Inspection visits

A visit counts as having a due date if one falls 0 to 30 days after it. The figures cover visits from September 9, 2021 to August 27, 2026 at every small home not pending, including homes that later closed.

What we left out

We set aside 3,007 visits that had another visit within 30 days before or after, because the due date could belong to either. We also set aside 109 small homes whose citation and due-date lists differ in length.

Adding the 3,007 visits back, with the 109 homes still left out, gives 75.5% if none of them counts as having a due date.
It gives 68.6% if the ones with a nearby due date count.
Those are what-if figures, and the true share could fall outside them.
The due dates also do not say whether a citation was Type A or B.

Earlier and later years

The file gives the year each correction was due, with no date for when a citation was issued. So the earlier and later records use the year a correction was due.

The groups hold 3,618 of the 3,680 homes; we left out the other 62, whose lists differ in length.
In the group with nothing due in 2022-2023, 46% had at least one citation due in 2024-2025.

Beds and residents

Beds are each home's licensed capacity today. The file has no occupancy, so nothing here is per resident.

One of the 187 homes with 16 to 49 beds has unreadable citation totals. It adds nothing to that group's two rates, so they may be low.

Size, visits and complaints

Homes of every size had about one inspection visit a year (0.89 to 0.93 per home). We do not know why the citation rates differ.

Citations from complaint visits make up 47% of Type A citations at homes with 50 or more beds, and 13% at small homes.
Without them, the per-home rate is 0.347 for small homes and 0.452 for the largest.

Regional offices

The 54% against 14% gap, none due early versus six or more, shows up inside each regional office big enough to compare. So the office alone does not explain it, though we did not check other ways the homes differ.

Six offices are big enough, with 20 or more homes in both groups.
Inside them, the gap runs 26 to 62 percentage points.

Calendar

Across the 3,618 homes with matching lists, citations due rose from the earlier years to the later ones, and we do not know why. Homes with extreme counts also tend to move toward the middle.

Citations due per home: 1.62 in 2022-2023, 2.72 in 2024-2025.
Share with none due: 55.8%, then 43.7%.

Checks

One script reproduces every number on this page, and a second, written separately, reproduced them from a copy with names and addresses removed. We name no home or office, and every group has at least 20 homes.

Working from that copy, the second script could not confirm the checksum, or whether a nearby due date means a visit was cited.

Questions

What is the difference between Type A and Type B?

CCLD's glossary says Type A citations "are issued for the most serious types of violations, in which there is an immediate risk to the health, safety or personal rights of those in care." It adds that "citations for these violations will always be issued, even if the violation is corrected on the spot." Type B citations "are issued for violations that if not corrected may become an immediate risk to the health, safety or personal rights of clients," such as faulty medical record keeping and lack of adequate staff training ^[4].

Does the state inspect every small home each year?

The law requires it: since January 1, 2019, every RCFE must get an unannounced inspection each year ^[5]. Small homes open all five years averaged 0.89 inspection visits a year in the state's file, which does not mark the yearly one. A visit covers more than inspections: CCLD's glossary says it "includes required inspections of the facility to evaluate compliance with statute and regulations, complaint visits to investigate a complaint allegation, and other visits for administrative or follow-up purpose" ^[4].

Can I look up a home's own record?

Yes: the state's facility search site publishes each home's inspection reports ^[3]. The law makes those reports, along with lists of deficiencies and plans of correction, open to public inspection ^[5]. This page shows groups of homes only.