In a post entitled "Single, Childless and Downright Terrified" Jane Gross writes in her NY Times blog about the fear of growing old (Hat Tip: Belmont Club). It's not the age that gives rise to the fear so much as the combination of being single and childless and senior. Who, Ms. Gross ponders, will care for these people in their sunset years, when they can't care for themselves.

I’ve written before about pairs or small groups of unrelated women who are ...constructing houses designed for their old age. But these arrangements, however cozy and comforting, exist outside the law, since friendship remains, and likely will always remain, an unsanctioned relationship with none of the legal rights granted to parents, children, spouses and, in some locations, domestic partners. Friends helping friends through illness or old age is a luxury of those who can afford to do it with no help from the government or their employers.

The handful of benefits available to family caregivers are not available to friends who have taken on the identical role. The most obvious example of this is the Family Medical Leave Act, which excludes friends (and also siblings!), even if they are around-the-clock caretakers...

..(A recent) essay in The Boston Globe by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow... examines the “second class’’ status of friendship in “the American hierarchy of relationships’’ and describes a nascent movement to grant it legal status. The subject seems ripe for conversation at a time when more and more of us are approaching old age outside of nuclear families.

It should surprise no one that columnists for the NY Times and the Boston Globe would favor of legalistic remedies over voluntary or private-sector solutions. There are already several publicly-traded firms like Amedisys, Gentiva, and Almost Family providing outpatient and home health care. Ms Gross and Tuhus-Dubrow are probably unaware that at the time of the penning of their laments, this sector was attracting the serious attention of institutional investors as evidenced by rising prices, volumes, and accumulation by major fund managers.

What is even less evident to them, I suspect, is that the fingers of their writing hands have also traced the outlines of a new business model. There are several small, privately-owned companies in operation that provide services for the able and affluent as long as they remain both. But that market is fragmented and under-served. The segment I'll call the self-organized living and assisted retirement (SOLAR) market is in need of viable business models. And chances are they will arise and diffuse well before the government extends legal recognition to friends.