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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The city's Office of Housing has released a draft of Housing 2040, a 15-year blueprint for Alexandria's housing policy, and the Planning Commission is scheduled to take it up at a public hearing June 2.
The 100-page draft plan was posted for public review and docketed for the commission's June 2 meeting, the Office of Housing said. Residents can speak at the hearing by signing up online or in person at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center, 4850 Mark Center Drive, where the meeting will be held. Written comments can be submitted in advance to Department of Planning and Zoning staff at PlanComm@alexandriava.gov.
Housing 2040 would replace the Housing Master Plan that Alexandria adopted in January 2014, which guided city housing policy, programs and investments through 2025. The new plan updates and broadens that earlier framework with new principles, goals and strategies aimed at the housing challenges the city expects to face over the next 15 years, the Office of Housing said.
The draft sets out five guiding principles and 10 goals, ranging from expanding the overall housing supply to preserving existing affordable units, strengthening tenant protections, expanding affordable homeownership and helping seniors and people with disabilities age in place. Other goals address the condition of aging buildings, the governance of condominium communities, housing quality, and energy efficiency and climate resilience.
The plan is framed around a vision that, by 2040, residents and workers of all incomes, ages, abilities and backgrounds have a place in Alexandria in housing they can afford that is healthy, safe and resilient.
The draft also lays out the scope of the city's challenge. Alexandria had roughly 84,200 housing units in 2025, with its stock split about evenly between rental and ownership, according to the plan. About 58% of households are renters, and nearly half of all households are cost burdened, meaning they spend a large share of income on housing. The plan reports that more than 34,000 multifamily units in the city are over 40 years old, that residents 65 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the population, and that the 20-to-34 age group fell 18% as a share of the city's population between 2010 and 2023 as younger, lower- and middle-income residents moved elsewhere.
The 2014 plan set a goal of creating or preserving affordability in 2,000 units by 2025, a target the city says it has exceeded when units under construction are counted. As a first step in carrying out Housing 2040, the city plans to set new affordability and preservation targets for the next 15 years, to be informed by current and projected housing needs.
Work on the plan began in 2024 and included community surveys, listening sessions and pop-up events, along with draft principles released for public review in 2025 and early 2026. The effort drew financial support from Virginia Housing, whose Community Impact Grant funded outreach that included translation and interpretation in Dari and Pashto, according to the draft.
The full draft and materials from prior Housing 2040 meetings are available at alexandriava.gov/HousingPlan. The June 2 docket is posted on the city's Granicus meeting portal.
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