Serving North Central Florida and The Villages

Senior Care Resources helps families in Alachua, Marion, Lake, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Levy, Putnam, Columbia, Bradford, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Suwannee and Union counties qualify for and obtain Florida long-term care Medicaid. Home to The Villages, the country's oldest-median-age metro area, where married-couple community spouse protections come up more than almost anywhere else in Florida. We work with North Central Florida and The Villages families by phone, video, and secure document upload — see what we do for our founding and fee.

Where we serve in North Central Florida and The Villages

Counties: Alachua, Marion, Lake, Sumter, Citrus, Hernando, Levy, Putnam, Columbia, Bradford, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Lafayette, Suwannee and Union.

Communities include: Gainesville, Ocala, The Villages, Leesburg, Clermont, Mount Dora, Inverness, Crystal River, Brooksville, Spring Hill, Lake City, Palatka.

What is different about North Central Florida and The Villages

This region includes The Villages and the Ocala and Lake County retirement communities, where a high proportion of applicants are married couples with one spouse still living independently. The community spouse protections, the resource allowance and the income allowance, do more work here than almost anywhere else in Florida. Getting them right is usually the difference between a spouse who is secure and one who is not.

More about North Central Florida and The Villages

The Villages, spanning parts of Sumter, Marion, and Lake counties, is home to the oldest-median-age metro area in the country at 68.3 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with a population that skews heavily toward married couples in retirement. That makes the 'one spouse needs nursing care while the other stays home' scenario especially common here, and it puts Florida's community-spouse asset and income protections front and center for a lot of local families.

Access to care is uneven across the rest of the region. Gainesville, the hub, is a university town anchored by the University of Florida and UF Health, with a concentration of medical and rehabilitation resources unmatched elsewhere in this sixteen-county area. Rural counties such as Dixie, Lafayette, Union, Gilchrist, and Hamilton have few or no local nursing homes or assisted living facilities, and families there often need to look to a neighboring county for placement.

Alachua, Marion, and Sumter counties each administer their own property appraiser homestead exemption and Save Our Homes assessment cap — the same statewide rules, but worth confirming directly with the relevant county office given how differently home values and household composition look across this region, from retired married couples in The Villages to long-time rural homeowners in counties like Dixie or Union.

Local agencies a family here will deal with

Elder Options : the Aging and Disability Resource Center for North Central Florida and The Villages — 100 SW 75th Street, Suite 301, Gainesville, FL 32607, 1-800-262-2243, agingresources.org/ . It screens applicants for the assisted living and home care wait list.
Department of Elder Affairs, CARES program : makes the medical level-of-care determination. The CARES program — the Department of Elder Affairs' medical-necessity assessment for long-term care Medicaid — is administered separately from the Area Agency on Aging, through its own regional field office. Call the agency below or the Department of Elder Affairs at 850-414-2000 to be connected to the CARES office serving this region.
Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) (ACCESS Florida, 1-866-762-2237): takes the financial application. We handle the filing and stay on the case with all three agencies through approval.

The 2026 Florida figures

The income cap is $2,982 a month, the countable asset limit is $2,000 for a single applicant, and a spouse at home keeps up to $162,660 in assets. These figures are the same everywhere in Florida, including in Gainesville — see the full Florida Medicaid limits guide for the rest of them and how each one works.

How we work with families here

A free screening tells us the applicant's income, assets, and care setting, and we give you a written summary before anything is filed: where the applicant stands against Florida's limits, what the application will require, and which questions need an attorney. From there we gather the documents, file with DCF, coordinate the CARES assessment, and stay on the case until there is a decision. See how the process works and what to expect from the application for the full walkthrough.

Frequently asked questions

Which office handles applications for The Villages and sumter county?

There's no separate 'Villages office' — DCF's ACCESS system processes applications online, by mail, or by phone regardless of county, and since The Villages spans Sumter, Marion, and Lake counties, your caseworker is assigned by the system rather than by which of the three counties your address falls in.

My spouse and I both live in The Villages and only one of us needs nursing home care. What happens to our home and savings?

Florida's community spouse protections apply the same way here as anywhere in the state: the home generally stays protected as long as the community spouse lives there, and that spouse keeps a portion of joint assets (the Community Spouse Resource Allowance) plus, in many cases, a share of income. Because The Villages has an unusually large population of married retiree couples, this is one of the most common situations we see from this region — the specific dollar protections depend on your combined assets.

Do you help families in rural counties like dixie, lafayette, or union?

Yes. These counties have far fewer nursing homes and assisted living facilities than Gainesville, Ocala, or The Villages, which often means planning for care in a neighboring county. We work with families throughout the full sixteen-county region, not just its population centers.

I live in gainesville near the university of Florida. Does that change anything for a Medicaid application?

Not the underlying rules, but Gainesville's UF Health and its concentration of medical specialists can affect where a loved one is treated or discharged to, which is worth factoring into a care plan even though it doesn't change the Medicaid eligibility rules themselves.

How long is the wait for a Medicaid waiver slot in North Central Florida?

Elder Options manages waiver prioritization for this region, but the state doesn't publish a current wait-list length as a fixed number, and any figure you find elsewhere may be outdated. Nursing home Medicaid has no wait list. Contact Elder Options at 1-800-262-2243, or contact us, for where a specific case stands.

Florida guides

Neighboring regions

Free Medicaid assessment

Find out where your family stands in North Central Florida and The Villages

We'll email you a short two-page intake form about your family member's care, income, and savings. Once you send it back, a member of our staff reviews it personally and calls you to talk through where things stand and what comes next. Families anywhere in Florida. No cost, no obligation.

Call (239) 977-5175

This page is general information about Florida Medicaid, not legal advice, and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. Medicaid rules change and every family’s facts are different.

Senior Care Resources is a separate company from Zacharia Frey PLLC. Its Medicaid application services are not legal services, and no attorney-client protection applies to them. When an attorney becomes involved, that is a separate legal representation with the law firm.