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A sweeping bipartisan housing package passed by the Senate Thursday includes several federal tools that Alexandria has identified as central to its own long-term housing strategy — and at least one provision that could directly address the city's struggle to convert vacant and underused buildings into affordable homes.
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who authored or championed several provisions in the ROAD to Housing Act, called it the largest legislative housing package in decades.
"Everywhere I go in Virginia, I hear from working families struggling with the high cost of living," Warner said during a remote availability with Virginia media. "The average age for a first-time home buyer in America is 41. That's incredibly bad."
The bill now heads to the House.
What's in it for Alexandria
The provision with the most direct local application is the RESIDE Act, which Warner co-wrote with Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind. The legislation creates a pilot program through which local governments could apply for federal grants to convert vacant buildings — including abandoned hotels, warehouses, and strip malls — into affordable homes, using HUD's HOME Investment Partnerships Program as the funding vehicle.
Alexandria's draft Housing 2040 plan, released last month and currently open for public comment through March 22, explicitly calls for supporting office-to-residential and vacant building conversions as a supply-side priority. The RESIDE Act would give the city a federal funding mechanism to pursue exactly that — if Congress passes the bill and Alexandria applies.
The HOME program has invested more than $788 million in Virginia communities since 1992, helping build and preserve more than 31,000 homes statewide.
Other federal provisions in the bill also track closely with Housing 2040 goals. The BUILD Housing Act cuts red tape around federal environmental reviews, aligning with Alexandria's push to streamline the regulatory barriers that slow housing development. The Homes Are For People, Not Corporations Act, which would prohibit large institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes, addresses displacement pressures that Housing 2040 identifies as one of the city's most urgent challenges. Alexandria has lost more than 11,000 affordable units since 2000, with units affordable to households earning up to 60 percent of the area's median income dropping from 18,000 to roughly 6,900 today.
The Community Investment and Prosperity Act, which would raise the cap on bank investments in affordable housing from 15 to 20 percent, is also relevant. Alexandria's draft Housing 2040 plan identifies more than $100 million in near-term funding needs for affordable housing projects already in the pipeline — a gap that expanded private investment capacity could help address.
What the federal bill won't fix — and what Richmond might
The ROAD to Housing Act does not resolve what may be Alexandria's most pressing housing policy obstacle: the limits Virginia's Dillon Rule places on what the city can do on its own.
Housing 2040's most ambitious preservation strategies — including a right-of-first-refusal framework that would allow the city or a nonprofit to step in when subsidized housing goes up for sale, mandatory payment plans before eviction, and rental application transparency requirements — all require state legislative authority Alexandria does not yet have. Those tools were part of Alexandria's 2026 Legislative Package, the City Council's formal set of priorities sent to Richmond each session. They are currently moving through the General Assembly as bills carried by Sen. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, with the session set to adjourn March 14. Whether they pass will shape how Housing 2040's implementation strategies are ultimately written when the plan goes before City Council for public hearings in June.
Warner acknowledged the federal bill has limits. "It's not going to solve the problem," he said, "but it's the first positive step that's truly bipartisan that we've done on housing, I would argue, in more than a decade." He said he hopes the House will move quickly and that President Trump will sign the legislation. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Election concerns closer to home
Warner also raised concerns Thursday about what he described as Trump administration actions that could undermine confidence in Virginia's April 21 statewide redistricting referendum, pointing to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's participation in a 2025 raid on a Fulton County, Ga., election facility and a recent FBI subpoena for Arizona voting records from the 2020 election as examples of what he characterized as politically motivated interference. The Trump administration has said those investigations are aimed at ensuring election integrity.
"I candidly fear — could even some of these tactics be used around our ballot initiative here in Virginia on April 21?" Warner said.
For Alexandria voters, the April 21 ballot also includes a city council special election. Three candidates are vying to fill the seat vacated by Kirk McPike, who won a special election to the Virginia House of Delegates: Democratic nominee Sandy Marks, and independents Frank Fannon and Alison Virginia O'Connell.
Warner also noted that Virginia gas prices had climbed from $2.81 to $3.37 a gallon in the 13 days since U.S. military operations in Iran began, compounding economic pressures on families already stretched by housing costs.
