Guide · Cost by state

How much does it cost to start a home care agency in Texas?

The state lines

In Texas, the state fee for the Home and Community Support Services Agency (HCSSA) License — Personal Assistance Services category is $2,625. The bond picture: no state bond minimum in the published rules. Insurance: State sets no minimum Timeline to budget against: HHSC does not publish a standard processing-time estimate for initial HCSSA licenses. The administrator and alternate administrator must complete HHSC's free Presurvey Training before applying, and an initial licensure survey follows after the agency admits its first client(s) (no later than 6 months after the license effective date).

The lines the state doesn't set

Formation (~$300 planning figure), a policies-and-procedures manual ($0–$2,500), screening at roughly $75 per hire, and — the line that decides whether the opening works — payroll runway: your caregivers' weekly pay multiplied by the weeks your clients and Medicaid take to pay you. At 3 caregivers, 30 hours a week, $17 an hour and a 30-day payment lag, the runway alone is about $7,650.

Your number, computed

Run the true-cost calculator with Texas selected. It uses this state's published fees from the dataset — checked October 22, 2026 against Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) — and prints every assumption next to its line, so you can argue with the inputs instead of with a stranger's blog total.

Against the anchors

For this state as for every state: the ~$3,000–$4,000 'fully legitimate' PDF figure omits payroll; the $40,000–$80,000 consultancy range assumes an office-first model plus the consultant. Your computed number will land where your model puts it — which is the entire point.

Dataset pages behind this guide: Texas state page · the full 50-state dataset (checked October 22, 2026).