About this Recovery Home
The Men's Home is a men's recovery residence in Alexandria, Virginia, on Hume Avenue in the city's Del Ray area. Alexandria is an independent city under Virginia law and belongs to no county, sitting inside the Northern Virginia region across the Potomac from Washington.
A Men's Sober House Operating Since 1952
Longevity is the fact that separates this house from almost every other recovery residence in the state. It has provided housing for men in recovery since 1952, which predates the modern recovery housing field, the certification systems that regulate it and most of the treatment infrastructure around it. The house describes itself as a home-like environment for alcoholics who are sincere in wanting to recover, and that phrasing is not marketing language. It is the vocabulary of the tradition the house was founded in and still runs on.
Alcoholics Anonymous at the Center of This Recovery Home
The house is built around Alcoholics Anonymous, with no clinical program attached, and it hosts AA meetings three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Sunday breakfasts and community events including golf tournaments and Sober Feast dinners bring alumni and neighbors through the door. For a man whose recovery is anchored in the fellowship, that structure means the meetings are in the building and the people running them are part of daily life. For a man who needs clinical care, medication management or a structured treatment schedule, this house is the wrong shape, and knowing that in advance saves everybody a bad placement.
Sober Living in Alexandria and Northern Virginia
Alexandria is one of Virginia's independent cities and belongs to no county, which puts city services, the Alexandria courts and the city's health department all in one jurisdiction. The location is exceptionally well served for someone rebuilding a routine without a car: Metro's Blue and Yellow lines, DASH buses, Virginia Railway Express and the Amtrak station connect Alexandria to Arlington, the District and the wider region, and the King Street and Route 1 corridors carry the retail, restaurant and trades employment that fills most first jobs after treatment. Northern Virginia housing costs are among the highest in the state, so a bed in a long-established Alexandria recovery home carries weight out of proportion to the size of the house.
Certification and the Virginia Recovery Residence Register
Virginia makes recovery residence certification compulsory and recognizes exactly two credentialing bodies, VARR and Oxford House, Inc. The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services publishes a register of certified addresses drawn from both routes, and that list is the first place a family in another state should look. It helps to understand what the register does and does not settle. It is republished periodically, it carries two separate credentialing routes, and a house credentialed through one route is listed differently from a house credentialed through the other. The way to establish which credential a particular house holds is to ask the operator directly.
What to Ask This Alexandria Sober House
The house publishes no bed count, fee or program length, so those are the first questions. Ask what the weekly or monthly charge covers and excludes, whether a deposit is required and refundable, how long residents typically stay, who is in the house overnight, how bedrooms are assigned, and what a relapse triggers. Ask whether prescribed medication for opioid use disorder is accepted, since a house rooted in the AA tradition may or may not accommodate it and a resident who loses housing over a prescription can lose the prescription too. And ask about the meeting schedule, because in a house like this one the meetings are the program.
Sober living homes are group residences for people who are recovering from addiction. In most instances, people who live in sober homes have to follow certain house rules and contribute to the home by doing chores. Most importantly, residents must stay sober throughout their stay in the home.
For the newly recovering man, The Sober Living Home provides an alternative residence and family environment. It encourages new patterns of social relationships and supports the healing process of alcoholism recovery.
With a singular focus on providing a living environment to help men in early recovery transition to full, healthy, and functional lives, The Men's Home is not a boarding house or a treatment center. It is not formally affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous, although it is supported by many members and groups of the Washington-area AA community through financial and other contributions, resident sponsorship, and fellowship.
The Men's Home has served recovering men for over 60 years with the sole
support of private contributions, which are tax deductible.
