Can I run a Golden Girls home for seniors in Texas?

The line is the services, not the rent

Texas does not license independent living. If you lease rooms and provide nothing beyond the room, the arrangement falls under ordinary landlord and tenant law.

Section 260.001 turns it into a boarding home when lodging is combined with support services for three or more unrelated elderly or disabled residents. The listed services include community meals, light housework, meal preparation, transportation, grocery shopping, money management, laundry, and assistance with self-administration of medication.

You cannot market shared meals, companionship and someone who notices when a resident falls, and then argue you furnish nothing but a bedroom. A regulator, a plaintiff’s lawyer, or an HOA attorney will read the marketing page.

Where the permits apply

• —City of Houston requires a boarding home permit. Roughly $307 to start, then an annual renewal and inspection.
• —Unincorporated Harris County has required a permit since March 1, 2022, administered by the Sheriff’s Office. Much of Cypress and Spring sits here.
• —Fort Bend County adopted boarding home regulations in October 2021, administered by the Fire Marshal outside of city limits.
• —Operating without a required permit is a Class B misdemeanor under Health and Safety Code Section 260.0051.

The local occupancy rules that end it before it starts

The City of Katy zoning ordinance defines a family as an individual, persons related by blood, marriage or adoption, or a group of not more than five unrelated persons living together as a single housekeeping unit on a nonprofit cost-sharing basis. A for-profit operator renting rooms to unrelated seniors is not cost-sharing, so inside Katy city limits the model does not fit the definition at any headcount. Most addresses that carry a Katy mailing address, including Cinco Ranch, are not inside the city limits, so the parcel has to be checked rather than the mail.

Pearland defines a family as any number of related persons or four unrelated persons. A six or eight person house does not fit inside Pearland city limits.

And no personal care, ever

A boarding home may not provide personal care services. The day a staff member helps a resident bathe, dress or transfer, the home becomes an unlicensed assisted living facility, which since September 1, 2025 is a Class A misdemeanor under House Bill 2510.

Residents age. That is the structural problem with the model, and no spreadsheet shows it.

The version that actually works

Do not buy the house. A boarding home counts residents who are unrelated to the owner of the establishment. A senior who owns her own home and takes two housemates has fewer than three unrelated lodgers, so she is not a boarding home facility, needs no permit, and is simply living in her own house. Texas HOA law is on her side there as well.

The business in that version is the matching, the screening, the agreements, the rent collection and the check-ins. That is a systems and software business, not a real estate business.