How to Pay for Assisted Living in Maryland (2026)

If you are working out how to pay for assisted living in Maryland and wondering how your family will cover the bill month after month, you are not alone.1

Assisted living in Maryland runs about $7,165 a month in 2026, and almost no family pays that from a single source. Most piece the bill together from income and savings, long-term care insurance, VA benefits for those who served, state help like SOAR, and, for low-income seniors, the Community Options Waiver, which helps with care services but never room and board.1,2 Below, each source is laid out plainly so you can build a realistic plan and know which months each one covers.

In This Guide

• What Assisted Living Costs in Maryland
• Private Pay: How Most Families Pay for Assisted Living in Maryland
• Long-Term Care Insurance
• VA Aid and Attendance
• SOAR: Maryland State Help
• Medicaid and the Community Options Waiver
• How to Pay for Assisted Living in Maryland: Putting It Together
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Assisted Living Costs in Maryland

The first thing that helps is knowing the real number you are planning against. In 2026, assisted living in Maryland runs about $7,165 a month (roughly $85,980 a year), above the national median of about $74,400 a year, based on the CareScout (formerly Genworth) 2025 Cost of Care Survey released in March 2026.1 These are industry-survey medians, not government figures, and they vary by region: the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore suburbs run higher, rural Maryland lower, and a memory-care unit or a higher care level adds to the base.

Here is how assisted living sits next to the other Maryland care settings in the same survey, so you can see what a move up or down in care would cost:1

Treat the median as a planning anchor, not a quote. Ask each assisted living program for an all-in monthly price that separates the base rent from the care-level add-ons, because that monthly number is the starting point for everything below.

Private Pay: How Most Families Pay for Assisted Living in Maryland

Most assisted living in Maryland is paid for privately, at least at first, and there is no shame in that being the plan, it is the plan for most families. The common sources to draw on are:

• Income: Social Security, pensions, and retirement-account withdrawals are the steadiest base.
• Savings and investments: drawn down on a planned schedule so you know how many months or years they will cover at about $7,165 a month.1
• The family home: selling the home, or borrowing against it through a home-equity line or a reverse mortgage if a spouse still lives there, frees up a large share of many families' net worth. One caution: a home-sale or reverse-mortgage lump sum that sits in the bank into the next month becomes a countable asset, which can disqualify your parent from Medicaid later, so plan the timing if Medicaid is a possibility.2
• Annuities and life-insurance conversions: some families convert a life-insurance policy to a long-term-care benefit or use an annuity to turn a lump sum into predictable monthly income.
• Bridge loans: a short-term loan can cover the gap between move-in and the month a home sells or a benefit is approved, then gets repaid from those proceeds.

Build a written timeline of how long private funds will last. Knowing the month at which savings would run low is what makes it possible to apply for the Community Options Waiver in time, rather than in a crisis.

Long-Term Care Insurance

If your parent bought a long-term care insurance policy years ago, it can cover a large part of the assisted living bill, and it is worth digging the policy out even if no one has looked at it in a decade. Read it for three things: the daily or monthly benefit amount, the elimination period (the days you pay out of pocket before benefits start, often 30 to 90 days), and whether assisted living, not just nursing-home care, is a covered setting. Most modern policies cover assisted living, but older ones sometimes do not. File the claim early, because the elimination period does not start until the claim is approved and care has begun.

VA Aid and Attendance

If your parent or their spouse served in wartime, VA Aid and Attendance is the benefit families most often overlook, and it can add real, recurring money to the assisted living plan. It is a federal add-on to the VA pension for a veteran or surviving spouse who needs help with daily activities. Because it is federal, the amounts are set nationally rather than by Maryland.

In 2026 (rates effective December 1, 2025 through November 30, 2026), the maximum Aid and Attendance pension is $2,424 a month for a veteran with no dependents, $2,874 a month for a veteran with one dependent, and $1,558 a month for a surviving spouse.3 That income can be applied directly to the assisted living bill.

To qualify, a veteran generally needs at least 90 days of active duty with at least one day during a wartime period (or, for those who entered service after September 7, 1980, generally at least 24 months), must be age 65 or older or have a permanent and total disability, must have a documented need for help with daily activities such as bathing, dressing, or feeding, and must have a net worth under $163,699 for 2026.4 A 36-month look-back applies to assets given away below fair value, so do not transfer assets to qualify without advice.3

To apply, file VA Form 21P-527EZ (veteran) or 21P-534EZ (surviving spouse), and work with a VA-accredited representative or your county Department of Veterans Affairs, who help for free. You can start at va.gov or call the VA at 800-827-1000. It is worth applying even if you are unsure your parent qualifies.

SOAR: Maryland State Help

Maryland has its own state-funded help that sits between private pay and Medicaid. Supporting Older Adults with Resources (SOAR), administered by the Maryland Department of Aging, provides partial financial assistance toward assisted living monthly fees for older Marylanders (age 62 and older) with limited income and assets who need help with activities of daily living.5 In 2026, SOAR consolidated three former state-funded programs, including the former Senior Assisted Living Subsidy, into a single program.5 The resident generally still contributes toward room and board, but for a family just over the line for Medicaid, SOAR can be the piece that makes the monthly bill manageable.

Medicaid and the Community Options Waiver

The hardest part for many families is realizing that Medicaid will not simply "cover assisted living," and it is better to know that now than to discover it the month savings run out. Maryland Medicaid (Medical Assistance) does not pay the room-and-board cost of assisted living.2 It covers nursing-facility care as an entitlement for those who qualify, and for care delivered outside a nursing home it offers the Community Options Waiver (the Home and Community-Based Options Waiver), which serves people who meet a nursing-facility level of care living in their own home or a community setting, including assisted living.2 The waiver helps pay for care services while the resident pays room and board, and because it has limited capacity there can be a wait, so it is best applied for before it is urgent.

To qualify, a person must meet both a nursing-facility level of care and Maryland Medicaid's financial rules, applying through the local Department of Social Services.2 For waiver coverage in 2026, monthly income generally may not exceed 300% of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) federal benefit rate (about $2,982 a month for an individual), and countable assets must be at or below $2,500.2

If your parent's income is above that limit, Maryland is a medically-needy state, so they may still qualify by spending down excess income on medical expenses toward a monthly medically-needy income level of about $350 a month for one person.2 A community spouse who stays at home is protected by spousal-impoverishment rules, which in 2026 let the at-home spouse keep up to $162,660 in countable assets.2 Maryland applies a 60-month look-back to asset transfers for less than full value, so getting advice before applying can prevent costly missteps.2

To start, contact your local Department of Social Services or Maryland Medicaid Long Term Services and Supports at health.maryland.gov.

How to Pay for Assisted Living in Maryland: Putting It Together

Here is how the sources stack against the roughly $7,165 monthly bill.1 Picture a wartime veteran whose Social Security and pension cover most of the rent: Aid and Attendance adds up to $2,424 a month on top of that income, often closing most of the gap and leaving only a modest amount to draw from savings or SOAR.3 Most Maryland families layer it this way: private income and savings cover the early months, VA Aid and Attendance or long-term care insurance fills part of the gap for those who qualify, SOAR can help if income is limited, and the Community Options Waiver becomes the backstop for care services once income and assets are low enough.

The key planning move is to map out, in advance, how long private funds last and when to apply for the waiver, so you are choosing on your own timeline rather than in a crisis.

Learn More

Find personalized help paying for assisted living in Maryland at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.