How many residents should a Texas care home have?

The thresholds that matter

• —Three residents. No Texas assisted living license required. Adult Foster Care, where the provider lives in the home, or a boarding home that provides no personal care.
• —Four residents. An assisted living license is required, if the home also provides personal care services OR administers medication. Health and Safety Code 247.002. Note the OR. There is no four-bed Type C license anymore; 26 TAC 553.5(d) says HHSC no longer issues them.
• —Six residents. The ceiling for Community Home status under Human Resources Code 123.006, which caps a community home at six persons with disabilities plus two supervisors. Where the chapter applies, that status is what can override a post-1985 deed restriction and what grants a use by right in a residential zone.
• —The staffing step. At some resident count, one more person forces another caregiver on duty around the clock. Where that lands depends on your residents, not on a rule.

Texas does not set a staffing ratio, and that matters

There is no numeric caregiver-to-resident ratio in Texas assisted living law. The standard is qualitative: staff sufficient in number to meet the needs of the residents. Anyone quoting you a fixed ratio, including a financial model, is giving you an assumption, not a rule.

And the assumption changes with the license type. A Type A resident is one who can evacuate without physical assistance. A Type B resident may need staff assistance to evacuate and may require attendance at night. A staffing plan that works in a Type A home can be dangerously thin in a Type B home, and no spreadsheet will tell you that. Your residents acuity does.

What is true in every model is the shape: labor is a step cost, not a smooth one. Residents share a caregiver until one of them does not fit, and that resident brings an entire salary with them, every day, around the clock. Find your step before you buy, because it usually decides the deal.

And the resident who improves your margin can cost you the property

Where Chapter 123 applies, community home status caps at six persons with disabilities plus two supervisors. Going past six puts the home outside the chapter, which forfeits both the deed-restriction override in Section 123.003(b) and the residential use-by-right in Section 123.003(a).

So the resident who fills your last covered bed may also be the resident who hands your HOA, or your city, the power to come after you. In a deed-restricted subdivision or inside a zoned city, six may be worth more than seven. Whether Chapter 123 reaches your home at all is a fact question for a Texas attorney, because it depends on whether your residents are persons with a disability as Section 123.002 defines that term.

This is a modeling question, not an opinion

The right answer depends on the specific property, the recorded deed restrictions, whether the city is zoned, the rate the submarket actually pays, the acuity of your residents, and the wage a caregiver commands in that ZIP code. Erika runs the property through a deterministic underwriting model that prices each configuration, so the decision is made on arithmetic rather than instinct. The legal side of it still needs an attorney.