How Much Does the Government Pay for Group Homes in Texas?

Government payments for group homes in Texas run from about $73 to $670 per resident per day, depending on the program and the resident’s needs. The most common setting is a Medicaid-funded Home and Community-based Services (HCS) group home for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, where the state pays providers between $164.46 and $341.83 per resident per day as of September 2025. Foster care group homes and Intermediate Care Facilities operate on separate rate schedules that go higher for children and adults with the most intensive needs.

The exact amount depends on three things: which program is paying, how the resident’s needs are assessed, and what type of facility is providing care.

HCS Group Home Daily Rates

The HCS waiver funds most small group homes in Texas for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. These homes serve no more than four residents and provide supervision, personal assistance, and skill-building.

HHSC sets a daily rate for each resident based on that person’s assigned Level of Need. As of September 1, 2025, four-bed Residential Support homes and three-bed Supervised Living homes receive the same daily rates per resident:¹

LON 1 (Intermittent): $164.46
LON 5 (Limited): $176.62
LON 8 (Extensive): $194.31
LON 6 (Pervasive): $223.81
LON 9 (Pervasive Plus): $341.83

One “day” of residential support equals 18 hours of service, and the rate covers attendant wages, direct care, and facility overhead.¹

Host Home and Companion Care pays much less, because a resident lives with a contracted family rather than in a staffed group home. Those daily rates run from $72.56 at LON 1 to $147.84 at LON 9.¹

Providers can also earn small rate enhancements on top of these base figures — between $0.40 and $10.00 per day — tied to their participation level in HHSC’s quality enhancement program.²

The daily rate isn’t the whole picture. HCS providers can bill separately for professional services like nursing, behavioral support, and therapy. Those hourly rates range from around $20 for personal assistance up to nearly $80 for behavioral support or cognitive rehabilitation therapy.¹

ICF/IID Facility Rates

Intermediate Care Facilities for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities (ICF/IID) are more institutional than HCS group homes. Federal rules require direct care staff on duty around the clock and continuous active treatment aimed at building independence.³

Because the care intensity is higher, so is the reimbursement. As of September 1, 2025, daily rates for non-state-operated ICF/IID facilities in Texas are:⁴

Small facilities: $173.61 (LON 1) to $511.83 (LON 9)
Medium facilities: $155.18 (LON 1) to $493.52 (LON 9)
Large facilities: $159.16 (LON 1) to $507.21 (LON 9)

Small ICF/IID homes are the closest institutional equivalent to a group home, and at the highest need level they top $500 per day — roughly $15,500 per month for a single resident. Smaller facilities receive marginally higher rates because their fixed costs are spread across fewer beds.

Foster Care Group Home Rates

Texas foster care payments now flow through the Texas Child-Centered Care (T3C) system, which replaced a rate methodology that had been in place for roughly 40 years. A standardized assessment determines which service package applies, and each package carries its own daily rate.⁵

Foster Family Homes

When a child is placed with a foster family through a Child Placing Agency, T3C daily rates run from $83.29 for basic support up to $328.41 for treatment-level care:⁵

Basic Foster Family Home Support: $83.29 per day
Mental and Behavioral Health Support: $169.49 per day
IDD/Autism Spectrum Disorder Support: $219.98 per day
Treatment Foster Family Care: $328.41 per day

Part of each payment goes to the Child Placing Agency and the rest passes through to the foster family. At the basic level, the foster family receives at least $46.90 of the $83.29 daily total. At the treatment level, the family pass-through rises to $139.58.⁵

Residential Group Care

General Residential Operations — the larger group facilities for children — pay substantially more because they staff around the clock and often provide on-site therapeutic services. T3C splits these into two tiers:⁵

Tier I (community transition focus): $270.80 per day for basic child care up to $472.14 per day for human trafficking victim services
Tier II (stabilization focus): $540.60 per day for sex offender services up to $669.03 per day for human trafficking victim stabilization

How Level of Need Changes the Payment

Across both HCS group homes and ICF/IID facilities, a resident’s assessed Level of Need is the single biggest factor in what the government pays. For HCS, a local intellectual and developmental disability authority administers the Inventory for Client and Agency Planning (ICAP) assessment, which scores adaptive behavior and support needs.⁶

HHSC assigns one of five LON categories from that score and supporting medical documentation. The spread is wide. In an HCS group home, a LON 1 resident generates $164.46 per day and a LON 9 resident generates $341.83, more than double. In an ICF/IID setting the gap between LON 1 and LON 9 can exceed $330 per day.⁷

Residents needing 181 minutes or more of weekly nursing services can have their LON bumped to the next tier, which automatically raises reimbursement.⁷

Foster care uses a parallel process. The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment determines which T3C service package a child qualifies for, and that package sets the daily rate.⁸

SSI for Room and Board

The Medicaid daily rate doesn’t cover room and board. That’s typically paid from the resident’s Supplemental Security Income. The maximum federal SSI payment for an individual in 2026 is $994 per month.⁹

Texas doesn’t add a state supplement, so $994 is the ceiling for most group home residents, and the actual amount can be lower if the person has other countable income. Providers usually collect this SSI check (or most of it) to cover food, shelter, and personal expenses that fall outside Medicaid’s scope.

If the resident gets shelter for free, the Social Security Administration can reduce SSI under the “in-kind support and maintenance” rules, with a maximum reduction of one-third of the federal benefit rate plus $20 — $351.33 in 2026. That reduction generally doesn’t apply when the resident pays a fair share of household costs from their SSI.¹⁰

What the Daily Rate Doesn’t Cover

The daily reimbursement is a package payment for supervision and residential support, not a full picture of what a group home resident’s care costs the government. On top of the base rate:

Professional services — nursing, therapies, behavioral support — are billed separately under HCS by the hour.¹
SSI pays for room and board, which Medicaid waivers exclude.
Quality enhancement participation adds up to $10 per day for HCS providers.²

One more piece worth knowing if you’re on the receiving end of these payments: not all of it is necessarily taxable. Qualified foster care payments under Internal Revenue Code Section 131 and certain Medicaid waiver payments under IRS Notice 2014-7 can be excluded from a provider’s gross income when care is delivered in the provider’s own home. The exclusion covers up to 10 foster individuals under 19 and up to five who are 19 or older, and the definition of “home” is specific: the place where the provider actually lives. Providers who care for someone in the recipient’s separate home don’t qualify.¹¹

1
Texas Health and Human Services. HCS Rates Effective September 1, 2025
2
Texas Health and Human Services. HCS Rates Effective January 1, 2025
3
eCFR. 42 CFR Part 483 Subpart I – Conditions of Participation for ICF/IID
4
Texas Health and Human Services. ICF/IID Rates Effective September 1, 2025
5
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Texas Child-Centered Care – Foster Care Methodological Rates
6
Texas Health and Human Services. HCS Handbook – 5000, Level of Care and Level of Need
7
Legal Information Institute. Texas Administrative Code 26-263.106 – LON Assignment
8
Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. T3C System Presentation to the Children’s Commission
9
Social Security Administration. SSI Federal Payment Amounts
10
Social Security Administration. Understanding SSI Living Arrangements
11
Internal Revenue Service. Certain Medicaid Waiver Payments May Be Excludable From Income