How this industry is actually paid
In Oregon they have to tell you. In California nobody does.
Four states compel a senior referral agency to disclose what it is paid and what it does with your phone number. California compels none of it, and has twice tried and failed. This page is everything a Californian family is not entitled to ask for — published anyway, including about us.
The size of the fee
85% to 100% of the first month's rent and care — and up to $12,000 where dementia care is needed.
That is Mike Pochowski, president and chief executive of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association, speaking to the Cap Times in June 2025 about what providers in his state pay referral agencies. It is the strongest public figure that exists: a named outlet quoting a named industry executive.
You will see “70 to 80% of the first month's rent” and “$3,000 to $5,000 per placement” repeated all over the internet. We went looking for the origin of those numbers and could not find one — every instance traces to a marketing blog, a placement agency's own explainer, or a vendor selling operators a way to cut referral spend. No named outlet, no industry body, no filing, no court record. We are not going to repeat a figure we cannot source, even a convenient one.
In their own words
What the national services say about who pays them
Every line below is taken from that company's own published pages, read on 13 October 2026. None of it is disputed, and none of it is secret — it is simply never read.
A Place for Mom
- Free to families?
- Yes — it says communities pay it, so families are not charged.
- Who pays, and when
- A network community pays when a family it referred moves in. Home care agencies pay each time a family is referred to them.
- How much
- A percentage of the resident's first month of rent and care fees. The percentage is not published.
Stated at aplaceformom.com/about and /about/methodology.
Caring.com
- Free to families?
- Yes — it says it offers its support at no cost to the family.
- Who pays, and when
- Three arrangements: a fee when a family hires or moves in; payment for passing on a family's name and contact details whether or not the family ever starts care; and an annual subscription for enhanced listings.
- How much
- Not stated as a percentage or a flat amount, and no amount is published.
Stated at caring.com/about/how-we-make-money.
Seniorly
- Free to families?
- Yes — it says the service offered to families is always free of charge.
- Who pays, and when
- A referral fee when a family moves into a community, paid either by the community or through a third party such as one of its local advisors.
- How much
- Called a referral fee; neither a percentage nor an amount is published.
Stated at seniorly.com/how-we-make-money.
Note what all three have in common and what they do not. All three say the family pays nothing and the provider pays them. None of the three publishes the amount. And one of them — Caring.com — says explicitly that some providers pay it for a family's name and contact details whether or not that family ever hires anybody.
What happens to your phone number
This is the part families do not expect, and it is not hidden. It is in the privacy policies.
A Place for Mom's privacy policy, effective 31 July 2026, says that as a family's referral agent it may disclose information about them to what it calls Organizations — the communities and agencies in its network — and that those Organizations “may contact you directly via email, telephone, text, regular mail, or in-person visits.” Its Terms of Use, same date, describe forwarding the family's information to those providers so they can follow up, in the plural. Submitting the form is, by those terms, express consent to being contacted by the company and by those Organizations.
Caring.com's privacy policy, effective 7 August 2026, says an enquiry may be shared with senior care providers to request a quote or information from “one or more third parties”, that those providers may then contact the family by post, telephone, text, fax, email and other means — its own page sets that in capital letters — and that the family “will not have the opportunity to opt out of the disclosure” of the data already shared for that enquiry.
None of this is an accusation. Both companies wrote it down and published it. The point is narrower and more useful: the reason a single enquiry can turn into a fortnight of calls from communities you have never heard of is that you consented to exactly that, in a document nobody reads, and in at least one case you cannot withdraw it for data already sent.
In fairness to Caring.com, its “How We Make Money” page also says that whether or not a provider pays it, it is committed to connecting families with the best options — so the blanket claim that every national service shows only paying homes is not true of every named operator, and we are not going to make it.
Four states, and not this one
Where a family has a statutory right to the answer
Each of these is a statute, read on the state legislature's own site. In these four states the disclosures below are not courtesies. They are duties, and breaching them is an unfair or deceptive trade practice.
Oregon
ORS 443.376(2017)- State in writing whether it refers only to facilities it has a contract with — subsection (1)(d).
- State whether the facility pays the fee — subsection (1)(e).
- Get the family's affirmative consent for each separate instance of sharing or selling their placement information — subsection (2)(a).
Washington
RCW 18.330.050(2011)- Disclose the method of computation of the fee and the time and method of payment — subsection (2)(c).
- Tell the family the amount it receives from the provider, if the family asks.
- Disclose any ownership interest in a home it refers to, its refund policy, and that the family may stop using it without penalty or cancellation fee.
Arizona
A.R.S. § 36-446.14(in force)- Disclose, at or before the referral, that the facility pays it a fee — subsection A.2.
- Disclose the fee amount, or a good-faith estimate, as a dollar figure or as a percentage of the first month's rent and care charges — subsection A.3.
- Use a prescribed notice, in fourteen-point type if written, which states the percentage range in blanks the agency fills in — subsection D.
- Honour the family's right to terminate its services at any time, including the use of their personal information — subsection C.
Georgia
Act 510(1 July 2026)- Disclose that it receives a fee from the community for the referral.
- Disclose that the list it gives the family may not include every option meeting their stated needs.
- Tell the family they may end its services at any time, including the use of their personal information, and obtain their acknowledgement of the disclosures.
California
None of the above. No required disclosure of the fee, no required disclosure of how it is computed, no statutory right to be told the amount on request, no consent requirement for each time your details are passed on, and no licence.
It is not that nobody tried. AB 499 would have imposed disclosure duties on referral sources, passed the Legislature, and was vetoed on 27 September 2022. SB 875 went further and would have required a licence from the Department of Social Services; it passed the Senate on 29 January 2024 and died when its Assembly hearing was cancelled at the author's request in June 2024. Two attempts, no law.
That second one has a side effect worth knowing. Because the licensing bill failed, no placement agency in California is state-licensed. Any agency telling you it is licensed or state-approved is telling you something that cannot be true.
Our turn
So here is ours, unasked
California does not make us publish any of this. We have written it in the shape of the disclosure Arizona and Washington compel, because a voluntary version should be at least as legible as a forced one.
- Who pays us
- The care home does, when a resident we introduced moves in. You are never invoiced and your parent's rate is not supposed to rise because we were involved — ask the home to confirm that to you directly, in writing.
- What we are paid, if you ask
- We will tell you the amount, or how it is worked out, for any home we put in front of you. That is the Washington standard and there is no reason a Californian family should get less. Ask on the first call.
- On a Medi-Cal placement, nothing
- We take no facility fee on a Medi-Cal or Assisted Living Waiver placement. Federal anti-kickback law reaches publicly funded placements in a way it does not reach private-pay ones, and the clean answer is not to be paid at all. More on Medi-Cal placement.
- Your details
- We do not sell them and we do not broadcast them. A home hears from us about your parent when you have said yes to that home. You can tell us to stop at any time, including stopping our use of what you have told us, and nothing is owed.
- Whether our list is only homes that pay us
- You do not have to take our word for this one, which is the point. We publish every one of the 97 licensed care homes in Anaheim, from the state's own register, with licence numbers — not a network, not a shortlist, not only the ones with an agreement. Whatever we recommend, you can check it against the whole list yourself in about a minute. An agency that will not show you the whole list is the one to ask harder questions of.
The shorter version of how placement is paid for, and the five questions worth asking anybody you call, is on are senior placement services free.
Common questions
Fees and disclosure, answered
- How much does a senior placement agency get paid?
- The best publicly sourced figure comes from the industry itself. Mike Pochowski, president and chief executive of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association, told the Cap Times in June 2025 that the commission a provider pays a referral agency can run from 85% to 100% of a person's first month of rent and care, and as high as $12,000 where dementia care is needed. Figures of 70-80% circulate widely online but trace back to marketing blogs rather than to any named outlet, regulator or filing, so they should not be relied on.
- Is A Place for Mom free?
- To the family, yes. A Place for Mom states that it is paid by its participating communities and that its service is therefore offered at no charge to families. Its own methodology page explains that when a referred senior moves in, the community pays it a percentage of that senior's first month of rent and care fees. The percentage is not published. The same is true of Caring.com and Seniorly, which both state the service is free to families and paid for by providers.
- Does a senior referral service share my phone number with care homes?
- Read the service's own privacy policy, because several say plainly that they do. A Place for Mom's privacy policy, effective 31 July 2026, says it may disclose information about the family to the organisations in its network and that those organisations may then contact them by email, telephone, text, post or in-person visits. Caring.com's privacy policy, effective 7 August 2026, says an enquiry may be shared with one or more third-party providers, and that the family will not have the opportunity to opt out of the disclosure of data already shared for that enquiry.
- Does California require a senior referral agency to disclose its fee?
- No. Oregon, Washington, Arizona and, since 1 July 2026, Georgia all require disclosure by statute. California requires none of it. The Legislature has tried twice: AB 499 would have imposed duties on referral sources and was vetoed on 27 September 2022, and SB 875 would additionally have required a licence from the Department of Social Services — it passed the Senate on 29 January 2024 but died when its Assembly hearing was cancelled at the author's request. So in California the disclosure is voluntary, and a family has to ask for it.
- Is a senior placement agency licensed in California?
- No, and nobody can honestly claim to be. There is no state licence for a placement or referral agency in California — SB 875 would have created one in 2024 and it died. What does bind an agency is Health and Safety Code section 1569.47, which among other things prohibits placing somebody in a home that cannot lawfully care for them. Treat any agency advertising itself as state-licensed or state-approved as a warning sign.
Statutes read at their own legislatures: ORS 443.376 (Oregon), RCW 18.330.050 (Washington), A.R.S. § 36-446.14 (Arizona), and Georgia Act 510, recorded as effective 1 July 2026 by the Georgia General Assembly. California bill history from the Governor's own legislative update of 27 September 2022 and the Legislature's record for SB 875. Company statements from each company's own published pages, read 13 October 2026. Fee-size figure: Andrew Bahl, Cap Times, 17 June 2025, quoting Mike Pochowski of the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association. General information for families, not legal advice.
Last reviewed . Statutes and company terms are re-read at source whenever this page is revised, because both change.
Ask us the fee question first
Open with it. What are you paid by this home, and how is it worked out? If the answer is vague, you have learnt something before you have told anybody your mother's name.
Tell us who you are looking after
Four short questions. Nothing you answer is shared with a facility until you say so.
Prefer to talk now? (714) 975-9652, open every day until 6pm.