This April, in line with National Healthy Homes Awareness Month, Alexandria’s Healthy Homes Network has released a new 2025 Healthy Homes Action Plan.

The plan describes resident-designed strategies to tackle Alexandria’s top-ranked home condition issues: mold, smoke, pests, and hoarding over the next several years. The plan also includes resident stories and data visualizations describing the current state of healthy homes in Alexandria and resources for people experiencing home condition issues now. 

An interactive 2025 Healthy Homes Action Plan and brief, multi-language videos describing the plan can be explored on the Healthy Homes Website. 

Creating the Plan

The plan was generated using feedback and ideas from Alexandria homeowners, renters, and property managers. In a 2023 survey, Alexandrians ranked the city’s top home issues. Then, during nine community focus groups, residents talked about their personal experiences with the issues and brainstormed practical ways to fix them. 

The Healthy Homes Network—a coalition of nearly 30 organizations and City agencies—used resident ideas to form a final list of five strategies in the new Action Plan. Specific strategies include:

• Increase access to resources that can help identify and fix mold.
• Address the mental health factors leading to extreme clutter or hoarding.
• Co-design and implement non-smoking measures for residential buildings.
• Develop data-driven pest control measures.
• Partner with Alex311 to make it easier to report home conditions.

Benchmarks for success for each strategy are included in the Action Plan. 

“Residents have been struggling with these issues for too long,” said Natalie Talis, the population health manager for Alexandria Health Department. “By coordinating our efforts around specific strategies, the Healthy Homes Network can really make a difference. Alexandrians deserve to feel safe in their homes.”

What’s Next?

The Healthy Homes Network will form workgroups to address each of these priority areas. Workgroups outline next steps and set milestones to track progress. Results and future data will be shared through updates to the interactive Healthy Homes Action Plan.

Everyone can make a difference for healthier homes in Alexandria. The Alexandria Healthy Homes network encourages homeowners, renters, and property managers to:

• Read the 2025 Healthy Homes Action Plan.
• Sign up for news and updates on ways to get involved with Healthy Homes work.
• Check the pipes at your property for lead using resources from Virginia American Water.
• Use Alex311 to report home health issues and teach a friend or neighbor to do the same. 

Questions? Email healthmatters@vdh.virginia.gov for more information on the Healthy Homes Action Plan, the Network, and how you can get involved. 

About Alexandria’s Healthy Homes Initiative

The Healthy Homes Initiative works to ensure all Alexandrians have healthy and safe, hazard-free housing. Requested by Alexandrians as part of the 2025 Community Health Improvement Plan, Based on a 2022 report put together by the Alexandria Health Department and the National Center on Healthy Housing, the Healthy Homes Initiative includes several programs led by different departments, community-based organizations, landlords, and homeowners in Alexandria. In 2023, the Healthy Homes Network, a group of twenty-six agencies and organizations working on home condition issues in Alexandria, launched to collaborate and lead  these efforts. 

Learn more at Alexandria’s Healthy Homes website. 

If you prefer communication in another language, free interpretation and translation services are available to you, please email LanguageAccess@alexandriava.gov or call 703.746.3960.

For media requests only, contact Eve Elliott, Alexandria Health Department Communications Officer at Eve.Elliott@vdh.virginia.gov or 804.467.5160.