As cases soar, ‘dementia villages’ look like the future of home care

WEESP, Netherlands - On a recent morning in this quiet village outside Amsterdam, an older woman stocked shelves inside the local supermarket. In the plaza just outside the store, a group of men sat around a table, chatting the hours away. Over in the town square, a woman in a hijab sipped coffee outside the cafe.

If it looked like a typical Dutch town - with a restaurant (which is open to the public), a theater, a pub and a cluster of quaint two-story brick town homes on a gridded street map - well, that's the point. Many of the people here don't realize that they are living in the world's first so-called "dementia village," and it can be difficult for visitors to tell the difference between the residents and the plainclothes staff.

Gert Bosscher, whose wife Anneke, received an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis six years ago and has been a resident for nine months, said...