Group Home & Residential Care Operation
The industry — Other residential care facilities
Base industry report for 6239 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 2,028
- Under 10 employeesA
- 37%
- Establishments · USA
- 5,828
- Employment · USA
- 123,478
- Payroll · USA
- $5.0B
Of 2,028 Canadian establishments with employees, 37% have fewer than ten — weighted toward mid-sized establishments.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Prove the value in money the buyer already counts. The need is real; what is unproven is that this buyer moves budget for it. That is a priced test with real customers, not a product problem.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 4
The binding constraint — willingness to pay
Group homes, transition houses and residences for people with disabilities are small by design — a house on a residential street, staffed in shifts — and that makes the industry look reachable: 37% of the 2,028 Canadian establishments have fewer than ten employees [A]. The cut is who pays and how. Almost every bed is funded by a provincial ministry or a regional authority under a per-diem or a service agreement, so the operator's revenue is a rate it does not set, revised on the funder's schedule rather than when wages move. The cost side is nearly all labour: the US counterpart runs about 21 employees per establishment on a payroll of roughly $41,000 each [A], which is what round-the-clock direct care costs. An entrant therefore buys a house, carries staffing at a ratio fixed by licence, and is paid a rate negotiated by someone whose incentive is to hold it down. The 6243 record found the same mechanism in vocational rehabilitation: the contracts do not fund the service, and the organisations doing the work cover the gap from revenue earned elsewhere. Here there is no such arm to lean on. Operators that do well are non-profits with fundraising, or multi-site providers who spread overhead across dozens of homes.
Residents are placed by a public agency, not recruited by the operator, so the market is whichever authority commissions the beds. An operator grows by winning placements inside that territory, not by marketing.
$835 million divided by the approximately 14,000 clients stated in BrightSpring's 21 January 2025 announcement. The same two-figure arithmetic prices the platform at about 0.70× revenue and 6.5× adjusted EBITDA — a labour-services multiple, not a real-estate one, which is the point: what changes hands is a contract book and a payroll, not a building.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 1 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 1 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| SevitaA | not disclosed | — | Privately held (Centerbridge and Vistria). Its $835 million purchase of BrightSpring's Community Living business is the only priced comparable found for a residential-care platform in North America. |
| BrightSpring Health ServicesNASDAQ: BTSGA | $12.9B | — | FY2025 net revenue, continuing operations — restated to exclude the Community Living business it is selling, and in any case overwhelmingly pharmacy |
| Funded non-profit and small multi-site providersB | not disclosed | — | The Canadian competitive set: 2,028 establishments, 37% with fewer than ten employees, almost all holding a per-diem or service agreement with a ministry or health authority. No revenue is published by any of them. |
| Provincial ministries and regional health authoritiesB | not disclosed | — | Not rivals but the buyer — they license the beds, place the residents and set the rate. An entrant that cannot be commissioned has no market at all. |
Evidence
Evidence. Establishment, employment and payroll figures are Statistics Canada (December 2023) and US County Business Patterns (2022) [A]; the per-establishment and per-employee figures are arithmetic on them. The anchor added in the completion pass is a transaction. BrightSpring Health Services' 8-K press release of 21 January 2025 states the sale of its Community Living business to Sevita for "$835 million in cash consideration, subject to customary adjustments", covering "approximately 14,000 clients" and "13,500 employees", with approximately $1.2 billion of 2024 revenue and approximately $128 million of adjusted EBITDA [A]; BrightSpring's results release of 27 February 2026 confirms the divestiture was still expected to close by the end of the first quarter of 2026 and restates FY2024 revenue to $10,072 million to exclude it [A]. The price, the multiple and the per-client figure are American and describe a market where funding follows the operator; they are the nearest priced comparable found, not evidence about Canadian valuations, and no Canadian transaction in this industry was located. No provincial per-diem schedule was opened, so the central claim — that funded rates lag labour cost — remains analyst judgment and is the first thing to test against an actual service agreement.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Provincial association of Ontario developmental services agencies; member updates, webinars and an annual conference (2026 OBRC conference at Toronto Airport Hotel).
Province-wide association of residential care operators and caregivers for children, youth and adults (reached via former oarty.net domain); annual conference, member forum, regional groups.
Alberta association of community disability service providers; training, accreditation and advocacy.
Network of CEOs of BC community social service agencies funded by CLBC; member forum and twice-yearly meetings (next 24-25 September 2026, Victoria).
US association of community-based I/DD providers; About page states 2,500 members (provider organizations).
ANCOR's flagship annual provider conference; 5-7 April 2027, New Orleans.
ANCOR's podcast for disability service providers; 22 episodes, latest dated March 2026.
No national Canadian provider association was found; the sector organises provincially, so the provincial bodies above are the operating-level communities. The ANCOR members figure is as stated on its About page.
Software serving this industry
Vertical software markets filed along the same branch of NAICS — who sells to these businesses, and who an entrant would have to displace.