The news comes as a jolt.

Butler’s YWCA Personal Care Residence home is closing on Sept. 24, forcing the county Area Agency on Aging to scramble to find housing for its 31 elderly, disabled or mentally challenged residents.

It’s difficult to find the villain in this scenario, although many will try to frame one or another in an attempt to make political hay; after all, it’s campaign season. Seems like it’s always campaign season.

Let’s not blame the YWCA or the Area Agency on Aging, who are doing their best now to find alternative accommodations for the residents. It’s not the fault of either agency that the government subsidy or late spouses’ pensions that formerly covered the cost of the residents’ care is no longer sufficient.

It boils down to a simple fact, a matter of demographics — that vast numbers of American baby boomers are living longer in retirement; many have not saved or invested enough money for these longer retirements and are depleting government resources faster than these resources can be replenished with the tax revenues of a smaller, younger population.

This is an extremely bitter pill when looking at the example of one local personal care residence. But the YWCA Personal Care Residence is not alone. Far from it. Beth Herold, Area Agency on Aging director, points out that four care homes have closed locally in the past two years, displacing 75 residents. That signals a business sector in distress.

It’s clear the problem is not lack of facilities. The YWCA doesn’t lack space. It lacks money.

The state Department of Human Services lists 24 care homes in Butler County. They run the gamut: 11 are for-profit businesses and 13 are nonprofit; six of them have 100 or more beds, 14 have between 30 and 99 beds and the rest have 29 or fewer.

A few years ago, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a legislative agency of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, projected a 15 percent population growth statewide between 2010 and 2040, with about 73 percent of that growth coming from immigration. One interesting observation was that the ratio of working adults to dependents would stay constant, but that the number of dependent children would grow as dependent retirees would decline.

This provokes a stray thought worth considering: We have empty elementary school buildings: Can we adopt policies that give incentives for converting school buildings — or any other solid, unused structures for that matter — into personal care or assisted living homes, with a future eye of converting them back into schools if needed for that purpose in the future?