This is actually one of the biggest reasons that socialized medicine is going to be a requirement rather than a nice to have.

Literally the cost of labor is just too high for this to not be part of a social safety net.

Assisted living, in general, is phenomenally expensive. It sounds like the mother lived in Sacramento, but they're renting out her house, so I'm sure that's a welcome revenue stream.

I suspect it's a labor thing as much as anything else. My father lived out his life at home, so I didn't have to deal with assisted living. However, the IRS is crystal clear that domestic employees are in fact employees subject to all the things like overtime and UI. California has even more generous overtime rules, but even just the base pay gets expensive. $20 * 24 * 7 = $3,360 in base pay per week. Using an agency simplifies things but is usually a bit more expensive.

Could be that his mom had some money saved up or had some pension $ that could be put towards it. Not sure if insurance would help cover housing costs?