Senior Care in Erie County, New York

The metro's urban and suburban core, seated in the city of Buffalo.

Erie County is home to 954,236 residents as of the 2020 Census, making it by far the larger and denser of the two counties this site covers. Its seat is the city of Buffalo, New York's second-largest city, and its geography runs from Buffalo's dense urban neighborhoods out through a ring of established inner-ring suburbs — Amherst, Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, and Williamsville among them — to more spread-out southern "Southtowns" communities like Hamburg, Orchard Park, and East Aurora along Lake Erie. Fourteen of the 17 cities and villages we cover sit inside Erie County.

We don't have a confirmed, current 65-and-over percentage for Erie County to cite here — that figure needs to be pulled directly from the Census Bureau's current American Community Survey estimate rather than assumed, and we'd rather say so plainly than publish a guessed number. What we can say with confidence is where the senior population concentrates: both the city of Buffalo itself and its inner-ring suburbs (Amherst, Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, Williamsville) carry a meaningful share of the county's older residents, which is part of why the metro's widest concentration of licensed senior care communities sits in and around Buffalo rather than in the outer Southtowns.

Erie County's hospital density is also unusually high for a metro this size: Kaleida Health (Buffalo General Medical Center, the Gates Vascular Institute), Catholic Health (Mercy Hospital of Buffalo, Sisters of Charity Hospital, Kenmore Mercy Hospital), and Erie County Medical Center — a county-owned Level 1 trauma center with its own on-campus skilled nursing facility — all operate within the county, which matters directly for families whose loved one is discharging from a hospital stay into short-term rehab or skilled nursing care.

Cities in Erie County

Looking for details on the county's neighbor across the Niagara River? See our Niagara County page, or browse all 17 cities on the cities page.