By Minneapolis Senior Advisor Care Team · August 7, 2026
Dakota County has more residents over 65 than any metro county but Hennepin and Ramsey, split between a dense western suburban market and a rural eastern end. Where the buildings are, which hospital you land in, and the one number that starts a Medicaid assessment.
One county, two entirely different search areas
Dakota County is Minnesota's third-most-populous county, with roughly 457,710 residents. About 17.8 percent of them are 65 or older — approximately 81,500 people. That is the third-largest senior population in the Twin Cities metro after Hennepin and Ramsey, and a higher senior share than either of those two counties carries.
Where those 81,500 people live is the part that changes how you search. The county's population sits overwhelmingly in its western and northern cities: Burnsville, Eagan, Apple Valley, Lakeville and Rosemount along the 35W and 35E corridors, plus the older river cities of West St. Paul, South St. Paul, Inver Grove Heights and Mendota Heights pressed up against St. Paul's southern edge. Then the county runs east through Hastings and out into farm townships toward the Goodhue County line.
A family in Mendota Heights and a family in Hastings are both Dakota County residents, and they are shopping in markets that barely overlap. Nearly all of the county's senior housing inventory sits in the western half. If your parent is east of Rosemount, the honest starting assumption is that the realistic options are in Hastings itself or across the county line, not somewhere convenient in between.
Our Dakota County overview and the city pages for Burnsville, Eagan and Apple Valley are the fastest way to see what is genuinely within driving distance before you start booking tours.
The county government is in Hastings. The office you need is not.
This trips up more families than it should. Dakota County's Administration Center is at 1590 Highway 55 in Hastings, at the far eastern edge of the county, reachable at 651-437-3191. It is the county seat and it is where the Board of Commissioners meets.
It is not where you go to start a long-term care conversation. Dakota County Community Services runs its long-term care consultation out of the Northern Service Center at 1 Mendota Road West, Suite 300, in West St. Paul — roughly thirty minutes northwest of the Administration Center, and much closer to where most of the county's older residents actually live.
If someone tells you to "call the county," get more specific than that before you spend an afternoon on it. The relevant office, phone number and email are in the section below, and they are worth writing down before the week you need them.
Dakota County runs an age-friendly program most metro counties do not
Dakota County Public Health operates an initiative called Communities for a Lifetime, which works with cities, businesses and residents to make local communities more navigable for older adults. It is not marketing. It has published background reports going back to a 2007 aging initiative and a 2010 follow-up, and it maintains active city-level work groups in Apple Valley, Eagan, Lakeville and West St. Paul.
Its countywide projects are the practically useful part. The Aging in Place checklists are built for exactly the conversation families have when they are trying to decide whether a house can be adapted or whether the move is overdue. The City Profiles Project compiles what each Dakota County city actually offers older residents. There is even a rideshare training program, aimed at the specific problem of a parent who has stopped driving but has not learned to summon a ride. The county also offers presentations in partnership with Dementia Friends Minnesota and Minnesota Own Your Future.
Now the honest caveat, because it matters. Communities for a Lifetime is a planning and community-development initiative housed in Public Health, reachable at 952-891-7500. It will not assess your mother, place her, or tell you which building has an opening next month. Treat it as good preparation material and a signal that the county thinks seriously about aging — not as a substitute for the assessment process.
Two hospitals, two systems, and neither one is headquartered in Dakota County
Most Dakota County senior care decisions that happen under time pressure begin in one of two buildings. In the west, that is M Health Fairview Ridges Hospital at 201 East Nicollet Boulevard in Burnsville, which its operator describes as a 150-bed facility serving the communities south of the Minnesota River, with emergency, surgical, orthopedic and pediatric services on site.
In the east, it is the hospital most Hastings families still call Regina. Its current name is Allina Health United Hospital – Hastings Regina Campus. Allina's own materials describe a 57-bed acute care hospital that opened in 1953, employing almost 400 people, with a 24-hour emergency department, critical care, medical/surgical units and an inpatient geriatric behavioral health unit. Its main campus, United Hospital, is across the river in St. Paul.
Say that out loud to yourself before you start searching, because the branding causes real confusion. If you look up "Regina Hospital" you will land on an Allina page titled for United Hospital. That is not an error and it is not a different building. It is the same Hastings hospital under its current name.
The practical consequence is about networks, not buildings. Which system your parent enters shapes which post-acute providers the discharge planner reaches for first, because systems have established relationships and shared records. That is convenient, and it is also a default rather than a recommendation. You are allowed to name a facility that is not on the list you were handed. Ask what the alternatives are and ask why the suggested one was suggested. Our walkthrough of a discharge in 72 hours covers the sequence.
One geographic convenience worth knowing: Ridges Care Center, a skilled nursing center on Ebenezer's Ridges Campus, sits a block from Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville. Its operator publishes 56 private suites and 17 semi-private suites. For a family managing a rehab stay after a Burnsville hospitalization, a one-block move is not a small thing.
Where the verified buildings actually are
Our verified directory currently lists ten Dakota County providers, and their distribution matches the population pattern described above — concentrated west and north, thin to the east.
In Burnsville: Havenwood of Burnsville, a rental community offering independent living through memory care, Emerald Crest by Cassia for memory care, and Ridges Care Center for skilled nursing. In Eagan: New Perspective Eagan, Applewood Pointe of Eagan, and a local office of St. Croix Hospice. Further out: Highview Hills by Vivie in Lakeville, Suite Living of Rosemount, and White Pine Senior Living of Mendota Heights. In Hastings, Benedictine Living Community – Regina sits on the same campus as the hospital, operated by Benedictine Health System.
We want to be exact about what that list is. It is the set of Dakota County providers we have confirmed against the operator's own website. It is not a census of every licensed community in the county, and there are more licensed buildings here than appear on it. We publish beds, license numbers, prices or ratings only when the operator publishes them itself.
Two of those entries are worth flagging because families routinely miscategorize them. St. Croix Hospice is a hospice provider whose local team travels to wherever the patient lives; it is not a place you move into. Applewood Pointe of Eagan is a 62-plus resident-owned cooperative — independent living, ownership rather than rent, and no licensed care attached. If you are unsure which category you are actually shopping for, start with independent living versus assisted living.
The one number that starts a Medicaid assessment in Dakota County
Minnesota routes long-term-care Medical Assistance and the Elderly Waiver through county agencies, and the gate is a MnCHOICES long-term care consultation assessment. For Dakota County, that number is 651-554-6336. You can also reach the intake team at clsintake@co.dakota.mn.us.
We are confident in that number because it appears on the Minnesota Department of Human Services' own statewide list of Long-Term Care Consultation contacts, listed for Dakota County Community Services at 1 Mendota Road West, Suite 300, West Saint Paul. If you would rather start somewhere that can also explain the programs before you are routed, the Senior LinkAge Line at 1-800-333-2433 is Minnesota's free statewide helpline for older adults and caregivers. It is operated by Trellis, which is the Area Agency on Aging for the entire seven-county metro. Dakota County families do not have to work out which AAA covers them — there is only one.
For general county social services questions that are not specifically a long-term care assessment, Dakota County Social Services is at 651-554-6000.
One rule to carry into every tour you book: the Elderly Waiver pays for care services delivered inside a licensed assisted living building. It never pays that building's room-and-board charge. Families discover this late and it reshapes budgets when they do. Our comparison of Alternative Care versus the Elderly Waiver explains which program a near-eligible parent belongs in, and Medicaid waivers and assisted living spells out the room-and-board split.
What we will not tell you: there is no Dakota County price
Families ask what assisted living costs in Eagan, or in Lakeville, or in Hastings. We do not have an honest answer, and we would rather say that than manufacture one.
CareScout, publisher of the most widely cited long-term care cost survey in the country, reports medians at the state level. There is no published Twin Cities metro figure and certainly no Dakota County figure. Memory care is worse: CareScout does not survey it as a category at all, so no published memory care median exists for Minnesota, let alone for a specific south-metro suburb. Any site quoting you a precise monthly number for Apple Valley either extrapolated it or invented it, and from the outside you cannot tell which. Our page on what senior care costs lays out what is actually known.
What you can build instead is your own dataset, and it will be better than any published median. Ask each community you tour four questions: the current base rate, the care-level add-on schedule, how and how often care levels get reassessed, and how much the rate has risen in each of the last three years. That fourth question is the one most families forget and the one that predicts the next three years of their budget. Write the answers down for every building. Then compare. See how families pay for the funding side.
Four numbers, and one of them is specific to Dakota County
Keep these somewhere findable, because they do genuinely different jobs and families routinely call the wrong one first.
For suspected abuse, neglect or financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult anywhere in Minnesota, call the Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center at 1-844-880-1574. It is statewide, staffed 24 hours, and it routes the report to the right county agency, so you do not need to know which one that is. Dakota County Social Services receives and assesses the referrals that come back to it. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911 first.
Dakota County also runs its own 24-hour crisis line at 952-891-7171. That is the Dakota-specific number worth adding to your list — it is the right call for an acute mental health or behavioral crisis in the moment, which is a different situation from a maltreatment report and gets a different response.
If the problem is a facility's compliance rather than harm to a specific person, the Minnesota Department of Health's Office of Health Facility Complaints takes that at 651-201-4200 in the metro or 1-800-369-7994 statewide. Note that it is a business-hours line, unlike the first two. And if what you need is an advocate rather than an investigator — someone to help resolve a dispute over a care plan, a rate increase or a notice to leave — the Minnesota Office of Ombudsman for Long-Term Care is at 1-800-657-3591, free and independent of both the facility and the licensing agency. Our guide to the ombudsman and filing complaints sorts out which office handles what.