How many people are on the APD waiting list in Florida?

15,251, as of the 25 August 2026 report. That is APD's own Pre-Enrollment Numbers by Priority Category and County, published on apd.myflorida.com and updated roughly twice a week. A year earlier, the 2 September 2025 report showed 20,789.

Is the Florida APD waiting list getting shorter?

Yes, on these two reports. It fell from 20,789 on 2 September 2025 to 15,251 on 25 August 2026 — down 5,538, or about 27 percent. These are two snapshots roughly a year apart taken from APD's published reports, not a continuous trend line.

What are the APD pre-enrollment priority categories?

Seven: Category 1 Crisis, Category 2 Transitions from Child Welfare, Category 3 Intensive Needs, Category 4 Caregiver Over Age 60, Category 5 Transition from School, Category 6 Age 21 and Older, and Category 7 Under Age 21. Categories 1 and 2 showed zero people on both the September 2025 and August 2026 reports.

Which Florida county has the most people waiting for APD services?

Miami-Dade, with 2,028 on the 25 August 2026 report, followed by Broward at 1,480, Palm Beach at 1,194 and Orange at 1,088. Every county is listed in APD's published report.

Where can I check the APD waiting list number for my county?

APD publishes Pre-Enrollment Numbers by Priority Category and County on its Agency Reports page at apd.myflorida.com, as a PDF updated roughly twice a week. Every one of Florida's 67 counties appears on a single page, broken out by priority category.

Industry news08/28/2026·4 min read

Florida's APD Waiting List Fell 27% in a Year — Almost None of It Children

APD publishes the waiting list twice a week, by county and priority category, and almost nobody reads it. We read two of those reports a year apart and did the arithmetic. 20,789 down to 15,251 — with adults accounting for 4,749 of the 5,538 drop.

How many people are waiting for APD services in Florida?

15,251, as of the report dated 25 August 2026 — APD's own Pre-Enrollment Numbers by Priority Category and County. A year earlier it was 20,789. That is a drop of 5,538, about 27 percent. 4,749 of that drop is adults aged 21 and over. The under-21 count barely moved, and is now the largest single category.

APD publishes this roughly twice a week. Every county, every priority category, one page, free to anyone. It is one of the most useful documents in this business and almost nobody opens it.

So we did. We pulled two of them — 2 September 2025 and 25 August 2026 — and compared them. Everything below is arithmetic on APD's own published numbers. Both reports are linked at the bottom; check us.

What changed in a year

Total: 20,789 → 15,251. Down 5,538, about 27 percent.
Category 6, age 21 and older: 11,807 → 7,058. Down 4,749 — roughly 40 percent, and the overwhelming majority of the entire reduction.
Category 7, under age 21: 8,139 → 7,857. Down 282, about 3 percent.
Category 4, caregiver over age 60: 655 → 278.
Category 3, intensive needs: 167 → 47.
Categories 1 and 2 — crisis, and transitions from child welfare — showed zero on both reports.

The finding underneath the headline

A year ago, adults were the biggest group waiting: 11,807 against 8,139 under 21. That has flipped. On the August 2026 report there are 7,857 people under 21 waiting and 7,058 aged 21 and over.

So the list did not shrink evenly. It shrank almost entirely at the adult end, and the under-21 group is now the largest category on the report — because it hardly moved while everything around it fell.

What we are not telling you is why. These reports give counts, not causes. We have not read a state document explaining the change, so we are not going to invent one — and there is a real difference between people entering services and people leaving the list for other reasons. If you see the cause stated in a primary source, that is the thing worth reading, not this.

What this means if you deliver the services

The part that touches a provider is which end moved. Adults are what came off the list, and adults are who licensed group homes, supported living and personal supports are for. Children coming off a waiting list mostly do not need a group home bed; adults frequently do.

And the under-21 group is not going away — 7,857 people who age into adult services on a known schedule. That is the most predictable demand signal in this industry, published twice a week, by county.

The counties, largest first

August 2026, with September 2025 in brackets. This is the top of the list — all 67 counties are in the source PDF.

Miami-Dade 2,028 (2,678)
Broward 1,480 (1,882)
Palm Beach 1,194 (1,540)
Orange 1,088 (1,480)
Hillsborough 810 (935)
Duval 727 (1,105)
Polk 580 (769)
Pinellas 540 (744)
Brevard 515 (756)
Osceola 459 (626)
Lee 417 (518)
Escambia 351 (506)
Marion 337 (486)
Pasco 336 (425)
Seminole 331 (439)
Lake 319 (406)
Volusia 292 (529)
Saint Johns 255 (349)
Saint Lucie 254 (299)
Leon 246 (393)
Hernando 232 (319)

How to check your own county

Go to APD's Agency Reports page and open the current Pre-Enrollment Numbers by Priority Category and County PDF — it is the first item on the page. Your county is one row. It takes under a minute, and it is the same document we read. Bookmark it rather than trusting any number quoted second-hand, including ours: it is republished twice a week and ours is a snapshot of one day.

Sources

This article is general information for Florida APD group-home providers, not legal advice or a guarantee of compliance. Rules change and vary by region — always confirm the current requirement with the cited source and your APD regional office.