Assisted living means housing combined with personal care, help with bathing, dressing, medication reminders, meals, for people who don't need skilled nursing. Residential assisted living is the small version of the same thing: a house that the state has licensed to provide that care to a handful of residents. States use different names for it, adult family home, personal care home, board and care, residential care home, and the resident cap runs anywhere from four to sixteen depending on where you are. The strict meaning of RAL is that license. The loose market usage is any house where an owner rents bedrooms to older tenants with no care and no license, which is a rooming house with a nicer brochure.
On the fair housing point, several states do require cities to treat licensed small care homes as a residential use, and that protection has real force. It doesn't erase the state licensing process, the fire marshal's requirements, or local occupancy and parking rules, and all of those differ by state and often by city. Read your state licensing agency's rules for the license category you'd apply for, then call the local planning department with the address.
When an agent says RAL ready, they usually mean bedroom count and a hallway that looks wide enough. Sign-off from a fire marshal is a different conversation.
The part that catches people out is that this is two businesses. There's the building, and there's a licensed care operation with staff, payroll, and inspections. You can own the building and lease it to a licensed operator, or you can run the care yourself, and only one of those is passive.
