Aging in Place in Central Ohio: Which Programs Actually Help a Parent Stay Home

County levy services, PASSPORT, PACE, Medicare home health, city home repair and neighborhood villages: who each one serves in central Ohio, and where it stops.

By Darlene Matthews, Columbus Senior Living Advisor · Published October 24, 2026

What aging-in-place services are available in central Ohio, and who pays for them?

Help for a parent who wants to stay home in central Ohio comes through five doors: county levy programs such as Franklin County Senior Options, Ohio’s PASSPORT Medicaid waiver, PACE, Medicare home health, and private-pay care. Each door has its own eligibility test, and most families end up using two at once.

The Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging (COAAA) sits in the middle of most of them. It serves eight counties — Delaware, Fairfield, Fayette, Franklin, Licking, Madison, Pickaway and Union — and handles in-home visits, enrollment and case management for Franklin County Senior Options as well as PASSPORT. One call to 1-800-589-7277 can screen a parent for more than one program.

Outside Franklin County, the levy program changes with the county line. Our guide to central Ohio’s county senior levies walks through Delaware, Licking, Fairfield, Union, Madison and Pickaway one by one.

How do Columbus neighborhood villages help older adults age in place?

A village is an aging-in-place membership group, usually tied to one neighborhood, that connects members with services, supports and social contact so they can keep living independently. COAAA lists seven in Franklin County and one in Union County, and it offers start-up funding of up to $10,000 to groups forming a new one.

The Franklin County villages, as COAAA lists them: At Home by High (Victorian Village, Italian Village, Harrison West, the University District, Weinland Park and nearby neighborhoods); Home in Hilliard (residents 55 and older in the Hilliard City School District); UA Village (Upper Arlington); Village Central (east-side neighborhoods between the I-670 inner belt, Nelson Road, Whittier Street and Parsons Avenue); Village Connections (German Village, Schumacher Place, Merion Village and the Brewery District); Ville on the Hill (the Hilltop, through the Hilltop YMCA); and Village in the Ville (Clintonville-Beechwold). In Union County, Neighbor to Neighbor serves the whole county from Marysville.

A village is not a care provider. It will not send an aide to help with a shower. What it does well is the connective tissue: a ride, a vetted handyman, a neighbor who notices. Ask any village what membership costs, what volunteers actually do, and how it refers members to paid help. If your parent’s street matters as much as the services, our look at where Columbus seniors age in place covers the neighborhoods themselves.

What home repair and home modification help is there in Columbus?

Inside Columbus city limits, the city’s Chores Program pays for minor safety and health repairs of $2,000 or less, including supplies and labor, for homeowners 60 and older, or 55 and older with a physical disability. Household income must be at or below 80% of area median income: $62,450 for one person and $71,400 for two, effective June 1, 2026.

The owner must have owned and lived in the home for at least a year. The city lists LifeCare Alliance (614-278-3130) for referrals and its own intake line, 614-645-8526. Larger work — roofs, furnaces, ramps, grab bars, accessible bathrooms, stair lifts — falls under the city’s Critical Home Repair Program, which said in October 2026 that it was not accepting applications. Call the intake line to ask when it reopens rather than assuming it will not.

Two other routes cover home changes outside the city or above the income line. Franklin County Senior Options lists minor home repair among its levy services. And for a parent on PASSPORT, Ohio’s waiver rule (Ohio Administrative Code 5160-31-05, effective April 17, 2026) lists home modification, home maintenance and chore, and home medical equipment as covered services.

PASSPORT vs. PACE: which fits a Franklin County parent?

Both serve people who need a nursing home level of care but want to live at home. PASSPORT starts at 60 and brings services into the house through a case manager. PACE starts at 55 and wraps medical care, transportation and day-center services into one program run by a single team.

COAAA lists PASSPORT’s conditions plainly: 60 or older, meet the financial rules for the Medicaid waiver, live in a private residence, need nursing home level of care, be able to stay safely at home at reasonable cost, agree to the care plan, and have a physician approve it. The services come to your parent; their doctors stay the same.

PACE works the other way around. The Ohio Department of Aging extended PACE to Franklin County residents 55 and older in 2025, for people who would otherwise need nursing-facility care; most participants are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, though private pay is possible. NBC4 reported that BoldAge PACE opened to Franklin County residents in October 2025, with rides to its center, to medical appointments and to activities. The trade-off is that the PACE team coordinates your parent’s care, so ask how it works with the doctors they already see.

Geography decides a lot. The state’s 2025 list of current PACE areas included Franklin County but none of the other six central Ohio counties we cover, so a parent in Delaware or Licking County is weighing PASSPORT and the county levy, not PACE.

When does aging in place stop working in central Ohio?

Aging in place usually stops working when a parent needs someone present around the clock, because no public program here pays for that at home. Medicare’s home health benefit explicitly excludes 24-hour care, and levy and waiver services arrive as visits and hours.

Medicare also does not pay for meal delivery, for homemaker services unrelated to the care plan, or for help with bathing and dressing when that is the only care a person needs. Those gaps are why Medicare home health and private-duty care get confused so often.

The cost line crosses sooner than families expect. In CareScout’s 2025 survey, Ohio’s statewide median for homemaker services was $6,483 a month, slightly above the $6,103 median for an assisted living community. Those are state figures; no published survey breaks out Columbus. Our cost of care page and our in-home care vs. assisted living comparison lay out the rest.

Watch for the signs that the plan has changed: nights that are no longer safe alone, a family caregiver covering what amounts to a second job, or repeated falls. At that point the honest comparison is between round-the-clock paid hours and a licensed community, not between home and giving up.

Last verified: October 2026. Program rules, income limits and service areas change; confirm each one with the agency before you plan around it. We are a free advisory service, not a government agency.

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