Small enough to tour properly in a morning
Touring board and care homes is normally exhausting. They are scattered across a city, none of them look like anything from the street, and a family ends up deciding after seeing two or three houses on different days with no real basis for comparison. Sherman Oaks is easier than that, not because of anything about the homes but because of the arithmetic: 19 records across 4 ZIP codes, 17 of them houses.
A list that size can be seen properly. You can visit several in one morning, at the same time of day, watch how each one is actually staffed rather than how it describes itself, and compare them while they are still fresh. Even when none of them turns out to be right, that morning teaches you what to look for everywhere else in the Valley.
For the record, the plain count of licensed homes put Sherman Oaks number 26 of the 119 Los Angeles County cities with at least one, a position 2 cities held jointly. Counting only the six bed houses it sat number 23 of the same 119, shared by 3 cities. Neither of those is a verdict on anything. They are positions in a long list.
North of the boulevard, south of the boulevard
Ventura Boulevard splits this city in a way that shows up in the state's own data. Counting every licensed home, the file put 7 in 91401 north of Ventura Boulevard toward Van Nuys, 6 in 91403 on the slope south of the boulevard, 4 in 91423 on the Studio City side, and 2 in 91411.
Counting only the six bed houses gives a different list against a different total of 17: 7 in 91401, 5 in 91403, 4 in 91423, and 1 in 91411. The two lists answer different questions and are worth keeping apart.
Tour the two sides of the boulevard as two neighborhoods rather than one. The hillside streets south of it and the flat grid north of it are different places to arrive at, to park on and to visit on a weekday evening, and it is worth seeing both before you decide which one your family will actually keep driving to. What any one home charges is set by an assessment of your parent rather than by the address, so ask each of them for its own rate. The state file carries none.
Ventura Boulevard is one market, not a set of city lines
The 914 ZIP code area is where the file recorded 105 licensed homes across 6 places, Sherman Oaks included, and it is the honest shape of this search. Van Nuys, immediately north, accounted for 51 of them on its own. Encino, which shares the boulevard going west, accounted for 7. Across the three largest of the neighboring places in that group, the file recorded 73 licensed homes between them.
The city boundaries here do not describe the market. Ventura Boulevard runs continuously through Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino and Tarzana, the buildings do not change character at the line, and a home a few hundred yards west of your parent's old house can be filed under a different city name entirely. Search the corridor, not the city.
Van Nuys is the usual first place to widen into. It is minutes north, the drive for a visitor is only a few minutes longer, and it is worth asking each home there for its own rate rather than assuming the corridor prices as one. Beyond that, the area covered by CDSS regional office 29 is where the file recorded 212 licensed homes across 14 places. That is a licensing boundary rather than a neighborhood, and it reaches further than most families here want to drive.
Where a placement here usually starts
Sherman Oaks Hospital on Van Nuys Boulevard is inside the city. Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys and Encino Hospital Medical Center on Ventura Boulevard are both a few minutes away. Between them they are where most placements along this corridor actually begin.
It goes the same way almost every time. There is a fall or an infection, your parent stabilizes on the ward, and someone from the discharge team tells you that going back home alone is not safe any more. That conversation arrives with a date attached and rarely with much warning, and the days between the conversation and the date are the days that decide how good the outcome is.
So call with the date rather than after it. Ask the hospital what help your parent will need at three in the morning rather than at three in the afternoon, because that answer is what decides between a large community and a six bed house, and it is the question discharge planning most often skips.
Free to your family, and why
It is fair to ask how a free service pays for itself, so here is the whole of it. A community pays us a referral fee when a family we introduced moves in. Your family pays nothing, at any stage, and there is no invoice at the end.
What that means for how you should read this page: we are a placement and referral agency, not a care provider. We do not own, operate, manage or inspect any home listed here. A listing is a public record of what the state had on file, not a recommendation from us and not a judgment about the home. You are welcome to call any of them yourself, and nothing on this page asks you to come through us.
What we add is the part the table cannot carry: who has space this month, which home will accept the level of care your mother actually needs, which one has a caregiver who speaks her first language on the night shift, and which we would not put our own parent in. None of that is in any public file, and all of it changes week to week.
Keep reading
- The advisory page: assisted living in Sherman Oaks and how we help
- Assisted living in Encino and the Ventura Boulevard corridor
- Licensed care homes in Woodland Hills, the state list
- Licensed care homes in North Hollywood, the state list
- Every city in Los Angeles County, and what the state file listed in each
- Board and care homes and RCFEs explained
- How to check a California RCFE license yourself
- What an RCFE license lets a home do, and where it stops
- Senior living costs in Los Angeles and ways to pay
- What a senior placement agency costs a family
Questions families ask us
- How many assisted living facilities are there in Sherman Oaks?
- The state file dated May 25, 2025 listed 19 residential care facilities for the elderly as licensed in Sherman Oaks: 17 licensed for six residents or fewer and 2 for 25 or more. The table below names every one of them, with the licensed capacity and the license number for each.
- Is Sherman Oaks mostly board and care homes?
- Yes. Of the licensed homes the file recorded here, 89 percent were houses for six residents or fewer, where the figure across Los Angeles County as a whole was 83 percent. On beds the balance shifts, because the 2 larger communities held 329 of the city's 431 licensed beds and the houses held 102.
- Which Sherman Oaks ZIP codes have licensed homes?
- Across all 19 records the file listed 7 in 91401 north of Ventura Boulevard toward Van Nuys, 6 in 91403 on the slope south of the boulevard, 4 in 91423 on the Studio City side, and 2 in 91411. Narrowed to the six bed houses alone, a separate population totaling 17, the same codes came out at 7 in 91401, 5 in 91403, 4 in 91423, and 1 in 91411.
- What does care in Sherman Oaks cost?
- A board and care home commonly runs about $3,500 to $6,000 a month as one all in rate covering room, meals and personal care. A larger community commonly runs about $4,500 to $8,000 a month, normally base rent plus a care level fee set by an assessment. Both figures are typical Los Angeles market ranges. They are not prices we set or quote, and neither one is attached to any home in the table.
- Should I search Encino and Van Nuys as well?
- Most families here end up doing exactly that, and the state data supports it. The 914 ZIP code area is where the file recorded 105 licensed homes across 6 places, Sherman Oaks included. Van Nuys alone accounted for 51 of them. Encino, which shares the boulevard, accounted for 7. Tarzana is part of the same corridor in daily life, though the state files it under a different ZIP area, so this page carries no count for it.
- How old are the licenses here?
- The oldest first license date in the Sherman Oaks records is from 2006 and the newest from 2024. Of the 19 records, 13 carried a first license date inside ten years of publication and 9 inside five. A license belongs to the licensee rather than to the address, so a recent date often means a change of operator and not a new home.
- How current is this list?
- It sets out the state file dated May 25, 2025 and nothing that happened after it. Homes shut, change hands and have their licensed capacity changed. Check the current status of any home directly with the California Department of Social Services before you rely on it, using the license number in the row.
- What does your help cost?
- Nothing to your family. Our fee is paid by the community, after a family we introduced has moved in, and that is what keeps the service free at your end. We are a placement and referral agency and not a care provider, we do not own, operate, manage or inspect any facility on this page, and you are free to contact any of them directly without involving us.