A Village for Memory Loss: What the Dutch Tried at Hogeweyk

It is a care home laid out as a village. It is in Weesp.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Julian, 72, and Fran, 70. Julian's father is living with memory loss. Fran read about a place in the Netherlands called Hogeweyk and asked Julian to look at it with her.

"It is a village?" Julian said.

"It is a care home laid out as a village. It is in Weesp."

They looked for facts. The most useful one they found was an inspection report from the Dutch health inspectorate, written after a visit on 11 February 2020 and issued in April 2020.

That is what the report says. What residents do each day is not in it, so it is left out.

"Six or seven people in a house," Fran said. "I had pictured one large hall."

"What does it cost?" Julian asked.

"The report is an inspection, not a price list. It does not say."

The report gives no cost for a resident at Hogeweyk. It helps to know how the Netherlands pays for long-term care in general. The law is called Wlz, short for the long-term care act. It covers people who need permanent 24-hour care or supervision. A resident pays an own contribution that depends on income and on savings counted from two years earlier. In 2026 the contribution runs as follows.

Savings count too. Four percent of savings above €36,952 for a single person, or €73,904 for a couple, is added to income.

One more point matters for people who live abroad. Living and working abroad usually ends the insurance under Wlz, as reported by a Dutch health site in August 2026. A retiree abroad falls under a separate arrangement run by the Dutch agency CAK under treaties. An adviser or the CAK could say how it applies to a given person. Whether Hogeweyk admits people from other countries is a question for Hogeweyk.