How Utah licenses assisted living: Type I and Type II

Who licenses assisted living in Salt Lake City, Utah?

The Utah Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Licensing and Background Checks (DLBC), Office of Licensing, licenses every assisted living facility in Salt Lake City and the rest of Utah under the Health Care Facility Licensing and Inspection Act (Utah Code Title 26B, Chapter 2, Part 2) and the assisted living rule, Utah Admin. Code R432-270.

Neither Salt Lake City nor Salt Lake County licenses care settings; zoning, building and fire codes still apply to the buildings, but the care license is state-issued. The rule's trigger is broad. A residential setting must be licensed as an assisted living facility once it cares for two or more unrelated people who stay more than 24 hours and it provides or arranges help with even one activity of daily living, such as bathing, dressing or taking medication.

That means a “group home for seniors” in a Sandy or Taylorsville neighborhood is not exempt because it is small. If it houses two unrelated residents and helps them bathe, it needs a DLBC license.

What is the difference between a Type I and a Type II assisted living facility in Utah?

A Type I facility serves residents who can get out of the building in an emergency without another person's help and provides social care; a Type II facility may serve residents who need the limited help of one person to get out and provides coordinated personal and health care services around the clock.

The evacuation test drives everything else. Type I residents must be ambulatory or mobile, able to take life-saving action on their own, in stable health, and need no more than limited help with daily activities (no more than three needing total assistance). Type II residents may need total assistance with more than three activities, provided staffing meets their needs and one person can still help them out. Type II licensees must also employ or contract a registered nurse for assessments and routine health monitoring, and keep at least one certified nurse aide on duty 24 hours a day.

Source: Utah DLBC licensing records, data as of Oct 30, 2026.

What do large, small and limited-capacity mean on a Utah assisted living license?

Utah sorts every assisted living license into a size class by how many residents it houses: large (17 or more residents), small (6 to 16) and limited capacity (2 to 5).

Size class and type are separate. A six-bed home in Draper and a 120-unit building in Murray can both be Type II. Small homes often feel more like a house, with a shared kitchen and fewer staff on each shift; large buildings tend to have more amenities and more layers of management. Neither is safer by definition, which is why the inspection record matters more than the floor plan.

Who cannot live in a Utah assisted living facility?

Neither Type I nor Type II facilities may admit or keep a person whose behavior is a danger to self or others, who has an active communicable disease that cannot be treated there, or who needs inpatient hospital care, long-term nursing care or 24-hour continual nursing care expected to last more than 15 calendar days.

The 15-day line is the one families hit most often. A resident who returns from a hospital stay needing round-the-clock skilled nursing can sometimes stay with home health or hospice support for a short period, but if that need is expected to last beyond 15 days the facility must arrange a transfer. Utah assisted living licensees may not provide skilled nursing care themselves; they must help the resident obtain it.

Before admission, a licensed health care professional (a registered nurse, physician assistant, advanced practice nurse or physician) completes and signs an assessment stating that the person meets the facility's admission criteria, and repeats it at least every six months.

How many licensed assisted living facilities are there around Salt Lake City?

Utah DLBC's licensing records list 69 assisted living licenses in Salt Lake and Tooele counties as of Oct 30, 2026: 55 Type II and 14 Type I, with 4,439 licensed beds between them; 65 are in Salt Lake County and 4 in Tooele County.

The full list, sortable by beds, secure beds, city and inspection findings, is in our assisted living directory. Every row comes from DLBC's licensing record; we do not add facilities from marketing lists and we do not remove any.