Colorado Springs Senior AdvisorWhich agency licenses assisted living in Colorado Springs?
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) does, through its Health Facilities and Emergency Medical Services Division, which licenses every assisted living residence (ALR) in El Paso and Teller counties under Chapter 7 of 6 CCR 1011-1 and Title 25, Article 27 of the Colorado statutes.
The City of Colorado Springs, El Paso County and Teller County do not license care settings. Pikes Peak Regional Building and the local fire districts look at the structure, and zoning decides where a group home may sit, but only the CDPHE license allows a building to provide personal care to residents. The division works out of Denver; its surveyors drive down Interstate 25 or up U.S. 24 to inspect here.
What counts as an assisted living residence in Colorado?
Under Colorado law an ALR is a residential facility that makes room and board, personal services, protective oversight, social care and 24-hour supervision available to three or more adults who are not related to the owner.
That threshold of three unrelated adults is why so many Colorado Springs ALRs are converted houses on residential streets: a ranch home in Knob Hill or off Academy Boulevard with eight beds holds the same license as a 180-bed campus on the Westside. CDPHE lists 75 active assisted living licenses in El Paso and Teller counties with 3,283 beds; 6 are brain injury supportive living programs, which leaves 69 senior residences (3,278 beds), 32 of them Medicaid-certified ACFs.
Personal services means help with bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, moving around and taking medications, plus the protective oversight that keeps residents safe. An ALR is not a nursing home and may not keep someone who needs round-the-clock skilled nursing, though outside home health and hospice agencies can come in.
What do ALR ONLY, ALR/ACF and ALR/BISL mean on a CDPHE record?
They describe the payment and program attached to the license: ALR ONLY is a privately paid residence, ALR/ACF is also certified by the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing as an Alternative Care Facility that may serve Health First Colorado waiver members, and ALR/BISL is a brain injury supportive living program.
The ACF certification matters most to families whose savings will run out. A resident on the Elderly, Blind and Disabled waiver can live in an ACF with Medicaid paying the personal care portion while the resident pays a capped room and board amount, $810.00 a month in 2026 under HCPF's IM 25-030. A privately paid ALR has no such obligation. Our ACF guide explains the math; the directory shows each building's code.
Who may run an assisted living residence in Colorado?
An administrator who is at least 21, has a high school diploma or equivalent and a year of experience supervising personal care, clears a fingerprint-based criminal history check and a CAPS check, and completes 40 hours of administrator training split between Colorado regulation and operations and resident care.
Colorado does not issue a separate state license to ALR administrators the way it does to nursing home administrators, so the training certificate and the background checks are the credential. An interim administrator has to be reported to CDPHE within 24 hours and finish the training within 30 days. On a tour, ask who the administrator is, how long they have held the job, and who is in charge on weekends.
How often does CDPHE inspect Colorado Springs assisted living?
CDPHE surveys ALRs on a periodic licensing cycle and whenever a complaint or a reported occurrence calls for it, and its public Find and Compare tool lists each building's inspections, citations and occurrence reports for roughly the past three years.
That tool is the reason our facility pages can show a visit-by-visit history: we read CDPHE's per-facility inspection export for every ALR and nursing home in the two counties. Across the 69 senior ALRs, the record shows a median of 8 inspections and 13 citations per residence in that window, with 0 showing no inspection at all. An inspection with citations is not a closure order; the residence must submit a plan of correction, and a revisit checks it. Read the record as a pattern over several years rather than as a grade.
Side by side
| A Colorado ALR license is | A Colorado ALR license is not | |
|---|---|---|
| Who grants it | CDPHE's Health Facilities division | A federal CMS certification or star rating |
| What it permits | Room, board, personal care and 24-hour supervision | Round-the-clock skilled nursing |
| Dementia | Allowed in a secure environment that meets Part 25 | A separate memory care license |
| Payment | Private pay, or Medicaid waiver care where certified as an ACF | A promise that Medicaid will be accepted |
Drawn from 6 CCR 1011-1 Chapter 7, CDPHE and HCPF publications, CareScout, CMS, the VA and the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging; our editorial standards explain how we check them.
