“Every new home helps, but the Council must also adopt the other tools in the package to meet our county’s great housing need. Most important is the approach reflected by [the ZTA] —making it much easier to build duplexes, triplexes, and small apartments near transit and jobs,” Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, wrote in an email statement to Bethesda Today.
Category: News
CSG in the News: MoCo residents polarized over proposed workforce housing legislation
March 11, 2025 | Ginny Bixby | Bethesda Magazine
Supporters who spoke at the hearing in general praised the legislative package’s aim to increase the county’s housing supply and create realistic homeownership opportunities for more county residents.
“It’s a plain and simple fact that our county needs more housing,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a Washington, D.C. metro region nonprofit focused on housing affordability and transit access. “People want housing that they can afford, and they do not want to have to spend their lives sitting in traffic just to get to work.”
Release: This is smart growth! Creating a vibrant, walkable Oakton, Fairfax VA
CSG and allies support transformation of the old AT&T office building and its acres of parking. CSG is joined by the Sierra Club, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Fairfax Alliance for Better Bicycling, Fairfax Families for Safe Streets, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, Nature Forward, Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance, and YIMBYs of NoVA.
RELEASE: CSG and Montgomery for All support the More Housing N.O.W. Package
The Coalition for Smarter Growth and Montgomery for All are proud to support the More Housing N.O.W. package to increase housing options in sustainable locations and support our workforce and first-time homebuyers. Building more housing along our corridors, a central piece of this package, will help more people afford homes in Montgomery County and live close to jobs, transit, and amenities.
CSG in the News: Jawando urges County Council to pause attainable housing plan
The Coalition for Smarter Growth, a nonprofit that, according to its website, advocates for “walkable, bikeable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities” in the Washington, D.C. area, released a statement Tuesday afternoon saying the organization is “deeply disappointed” by Jawando’s comments.
“Smaller, multi-family units like those proposed in the Attainable Housing Strategies recommendations can be built and sold more affordably than single-family detached homes. Expanding housing choices also offers creative pathways and opportunities to produce subsidized affordable homes, a feat that is financially prohibitive to accomplish with single-family detached homes,” the nonprofit wrote.
RELEASE: CSG Response to Councilmember Jawando’s Comments on Attainable Housing (MoCo)
We are deeply disappointed by Councilmember Will Jawando’s statements on the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative (AHSI). His statements fail to recognize the reality of our county’s housing crisis and lack of sufficient housing options, and do not address the full range and potential of the AHSI recommendations.
Thank you to our donors!
Acting locally is more important now than ever—and CSG’s supporters heard the call to sustain our vital local work in 2025. Thanks to your generosity, we met our $75,000 challenge match and raised a total of $150,000 in our year-end campaign!
CSG in the News: County board split over possible I-495 toll lanes from Springfield into Maryland
“That the additional capacity of the HOT lanes would generate more traffic trying to travel to and from the lanes via connecting roads like Route 1, Telegraph and Van Dorn wouldn’t be surprising,” Bill Pugh, a senior policy fellow at the organization, said in a statement released by CSG after the committee meeting.
RELEASE: VDOT briefs flawed I-495 Southside Study to Fairfax County Board of Supervisors
“In addition to ignoring induced demand and relying on flawed traffic models, VDOT’s study is compromised at the outset by its ‘conclusions-first’ approach,” said Pugh. “The agency’s stated project purpose is ‘to extend and provide continuity of the Express Lanes system’ and their evaluation criteria reinforce this predetermined conclusion. They have also excluded viable alternatives from study.”
Op-ed: Adopt fix-it-first, climate-resilient, sustainable transportation priorities (Maryland Matters)
In short, sustainable land use, transit, and a fix-it-first and resilience-first approach to Maryland transportation and infrastructure spending is essential for Maryland’s future.