A New Housing Model For Managing Mental Decline

A new housing model for managing mental decline

- Karin Olafson

Peter Moody always starts his day with a cup of coffee. He then laces up his white Reeboks and heads out the front door for a run. Moody might jog past his neighbour, Bob Beauchamp, walking his black-and-white dog, Lucy. He might pass another resident on their way to buy a few groceries or others sitting on a bench in front of their cottages, enjoying the sunshine. Later in the day, Moody might visit the community centre to listen to music or watch a movie. Or he might go on another jog.

It’s an unremarkable scene, really, except that each of the community’s forty-five current residents lives with some form of dementia: the syndrome where memory and the ability to perform everyday activities progressively deteriorate. The Village, located in Langley, BC, opened its doors last August, making it the first dementia-care facility in Canada that does not identify as a hospital or a care home but a whole town. There’s the community centre, which houses a general store and a hair salon. Residents live in six single-storey cottages, each painted a different colour, with white picket fences. There’s a well-tended communal garden. Tall evergreen trees line the Village’s picturesque perimeter, as does a two-and-a-half-metre-tall fence, built so residents can wander the grounds independently without straying too far from staff.