What it costs to keep her at home, against what assisted living costs here
Every family arrives at this question and almost nobody answers it in public, because the honest answer often is she can stay at home for less — and a site paid a placement fee loses money by saying so. This page says it, shows the arithmetic, and names every figure it does not have.
The short version for Oregon. The published median for a caregiver at home is $40 an hour; the published median for assisted living is $6,875 a month, all in (CareScout (Genworth) Cost of Care Survey, 2025). Divide one into the other and you get the number this whole page is about: at about 40 hours a week, the caregiver alone costs what the entire assisted-living bill costs.
And that comparison flatters staying at home, so read it carefully. The assisted-living figure buys the room, the food, the utilities, the activities and staff on the premises at night. The home-care figure buys the caregiver and nothing else — underneath it she is still paying her mortgage or rent, her heating and her groceries, exactly as she is today. Below the crossover, home is usually cheaper and it is not close. Above it, home is more expensive than the number suggests, not less.
Where in Oregon changes the answer more than most families expect: the crossover runs from about 30 hours a week in Corvallis to about 46 in Eugene, because assisted living and caregiver wages do not move together from one town to the next.
Build the stack
Pick where she lives and how much of each thing she needs. Every figure below is a published median with its source attached, and anything modeled rather than measured is marked est. and shows the number it was modeled from. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere.
What the survey publishes
| Region | Home care, an hour | Assisted living, a month | Nursing home, a month | Break-even, hours a week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albany | $41 | $7,000 | $18,554 | 39 |
| Bend | $47 | $8,808 | $15,817 | 43 |
| Corvallis | $40 | $5,249 | about $12,796 est. | 30 |
| Eugene | $39 | $7,690 | $18,280 | 46 |
| Grants Pass | $38 | $7,163 | $17,125 | 44 |
| Medford | $39 | $6,875 | $16,760 | 41 |
| Portland | $45 | $7,889 | $16,729 | 40 |
| Salem | $39 | $7,250 | $17,794 | 43 |
| rural Oregon | $37 | $6,238 | $16,760 | 39 |
| Oregon, all of it | $40 | $6,875 | $16,760 | 40 |
Who pays for any of this
Start here, because it changes the arithmetic more than any choice on the stack. Medicare does not pay for long-term care. That is not our summary of it; it is the heading Medicare itself puts on the page, over the words “Not Covered. You pay all costs” — and the examples it gives of what it will not pay for are help with dressing and bathing, home-delivered meals, adult day health care and transportation. Which is to say: nearly every line on the stack above.
| Medicare | Not long-term care. It does cover home health — a nurse or therapist, and an aide alongside them — if she is “homebound” and needs skilled care part-time or intermittently, which Medicare defines as up to 8 hours a day and 28 hours a week. You pay nothing for covered visits. It will not pay for round-the-clock care at home, meal delivery, or housekeeping unrelated to the care plan. (Medicare, Long-term care; Home health services) |
|---|---|
| Medicaid | The one payer that does cover long-term care, including care at home through home- and community-based services, once she qualifies financially. In Oregon it pays $6,480 a month for an endorsed memory-care unit, plus room and board from her own income — a state rate, not a private-pay price. What to do about it. |
| The VA | Aid and Attendance adds to a pension for a veteran or surviving spouse who needs help with daily activities. It is money, so it can pay for any line above. The eligibility tests. |
| Long-term care insurance | If she has a policy, read the benefit trigger and the elimination period before you plan around it — most pay a daily maximum after a waiting period, not a percentage of the bill. |
| The Older Americans Act | Free or donation-based, no means test: meals, volunteer drivers, respite, and the ombudsman. This is why several lines on the stack are marked unpriced rather than expensive — for a lot of families the right first call is the Area Agency on Aging, not a vendor. |
| This site | Nothing, from you or from anyone else, for anything on this page. |
What no survey prices, and why we say so
The stack above leaves lines empty on purpose. A monthly total that quietly treats a missing figure as zero is worse than no total, because it is the lines a family did not budget for that end the plan in month four. The survey measures care; it does not measure meal delivery, pendants, housekeeping, rides or a care manager, and neither do we.
Two of the missing figures we can bound rather than guess. ADA paratransit fares are capped by federal rule at twice the fare for the same trip on a regular bus (49 CFR 37.131), and the Older Americans Act meal program charges no fee at all — a suggested donation, and she may not be refused for declining it. Both are in the menu of needs, area by area, with what to ask.
The figure nobody publishes
Memory care has no published private-pay median: no national survey publishes memory care as its own category, so every figure you will find is an estimate built from someone's own sample. Estimates in circulation for 2025–26 run from about $6,690 to $8,019 a month — a spread of nearly a fifth — and at least one widely-repeated number is credited to the very survey that does not measure it. So this page does not carry one. What Oregon does publish is what Medicaid pays, above, which is a real and checkable number even though it is not a market price.