One assisted living community is licensed in Encino. We know all 31.

The first call, and what we ask you

It runs about twenty minutes and it is mostly questions. Can she walk to a dining room, or is that a hundred feet too far now. Does she take insulin. Has she fallen, and how many times this year. Does she need one person to transfer or two. Is there a diagnosis on paper, and who wrote it. What is the monthly number you can hold for three years, not the number you could manage for six months.

Then the practical ones. Which of you will be visiting, and from where. Someone driving from Woodland Hills on a weeknight and someone coming over the Sepulveda Pass after work want different towns entirely, and the difference is the whole reason the short list looks the way it does.

Then we start calling homes. Not emailing a portal, calling, because the answer we need is whether there is a bed this month and whether the care level matches, and that answer lives with a director who picks up the phone.

Why the Encino search comes up nearly empty

The state licenses 7 residential care homes inside Encino, holding 121 beds in total. 6 of those homes are licensed for six residents or fewer. One is licensed for 85. That is the entire inventory, and it is why an evening spent searching leaves families convinced that the Valley has nothing.

Look one town over and the picture inverts. Woodland Hills has 34 licensed homes but 1,554 licensed beds, because 6 of them are licensed for 25 or more and the largest holds 436. Northridge has 74 homes and 1,172 beds. Reseda has 36 homes and 837 beds, with a single community licensed for 271.

The buildings went where the land allowed them to be built. That is the entire explanation. It has nothing to do with the quality of care available to an Encino family, and everything to do with why a search bounded by the city line is the wrong search.

Look at the whole register, all 336 homes

The 31 buildings, and how they differ

Here is where they sit. Woodland Hills has 6, the largest licensed for 436. Northridge has 5, largest 194. Van Nuys has 4, largest 195. Tarzana has 4, largest 176. Reseda has 3, largest 271. Sherman Oaks has 2, largest 179. North Hollywood has 2, Valley Village 2, Studio City 1, Canoga Park 1. Winnetka has none at all. And Encino has 1.

Size is not quality, and anyone who tells you otherwise is arguing their own inventory. A community licensed for 436 runs a real programme: three dining settings, a bus, a full activities calendar, physical therapy on site. It is also a place where a quiet resident can go a week without anyone learning her name unless her family insists. A building licensed for 85 has fewer of those things and more chance that the receptionist knows who you are when you walk in on a Sunday.

There is no third shape. Across all 12 towns the state licenses not one home for between seven and twenty four residents. You are choosing between a building and a house, and we would rather you chose deliberately than by accident of what came up in a search.

The parts of the price, and when to walk out

Three numbers make up what you will pay, and only one of them is on the brochure. There is a one time community fee. There is a base rate, which mostly tracks the apartment: a studio, a one bedroom, a shared room. And there is the care level, set by an assessment, which is where the real money is and where the surprises live.

Walk out of any tour that wants a deposit before it has given you a written care assessment. Walk out of any rate sheet that shows a monthly figure with no care tiers printed beside it, because the tiers are where month three costs more than month one. And ask directly how many times the base rate has been raised on current residents in the last two years. A director who will not answer that has told you the answer.

We push on all three on your behalf before you ever tour, which is the part of this job that saves families the most money and takes the least credit for it.

What a tour will not tell you and we will

• Which of the 31 have a genuine opening this month rather than a waiting list they would prefer not to describe
• Which will decline a resident who needs two people to transfer, before you drive out there and get told at the door
• Which will accept an admission straight from a hospital on a Friday afternoon, and which stop taking paperwork at noon
• Which have recently changed ownership or management, which usually shows up in the staffing before it shows up anywhere else
• Which one is nearest the person who will actually be visiting, because that matters more over three years than a nicer lobby

If your parent is being discharged this week

Families reach us from Encino Hospital Medical Center on Ventura, from Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana, from Valley Presbyterian in Van Nuys, from Northridge Hospital, from Sherman Oaks Hospital, from Kaiser in Woodland Hills. The pattern is always the same. A case manager hands over a printed list and a date about forty eight hours away.

That list is not a bad list. It is simply a list of the places that answer the phone quickly and have accepted a discharge from that hospital before. It is not a list of the places that fit your mother, and it is very rarely a list of the small homes, because six bed operators do not staff a marketing office.

Give us the discharge date on the first call and say which hospital. We work backwards from it, and we will tell you honestly if the date is not achievable and a short term arrangement is the better move than a rushed one you will undo in March.