Yesterday, the Montgomery County Council voted 8-3 to pass Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) 25-02. The legislation will allow more housing types, like townhouses or small apartment buildings, along major corridors, creating more homes near jobs and amenities.
Category: Zoning
CSG in the News: Montgomery County Council to vote on ‘missing middle’ housing plan
July 22, 2025 | Maureen Umeh | FOX 5 DC
“Montgomery’s economy, the economy of Maryland, is in some trouble right now. If we cannot provide housing, that’s affordable to the workforce, they can’t come to the county and provide their talents and services to the county,” said Stewart Schwartz with the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “Companies will not come to the D.C. region and to Montgomery County if they don’t believe housing is affordable for their workers, they’ll go to places where it is more affordable.”
Read the full story here.
CSG in the News: Montgomery County Faces Pushback On ‘Landmark’ Housing Package
July 21, 2025 | Jon Banister| Bisnow
Carrie Kisicki, the Montgomery County advocacy manager for pro-housing group Coalition for Smarter Growth, said requiring property owners to go through an approval process would make these multifamily projects take more time and money to pursue. But she supports the overall proposal because it creates a pathway to building more housing on lots that have long been restricted to detached single-family homes.
“We’re still living in that world where people who 10 or 20 years ago would’ve been able to buy a starter home, or young professionals who would’ve been able to buy an apartment in the county, started to not be able to do that because of how little we’ve been building the types of housing that people needed,” Kisicki said.
“So this is to me a landmark package because it shows we’re willing to go back and look at some of those things we’ve taken for granted about where we build homes or don’t build homes.”

Event Materials: More Housing NOW Presentation to MoCo Young Democrats
View slides from CSG’s presentation to the Montgomery County Young Democrats on May 20, 2025.

Event: Zoning for Positive Change in DC
How can plans and zoning regulations shape vibrant, mixed-use, walkable communities? On April 23, 2025 we hosted a discussion with Code Studio, one of the national leaders on using innovative form-based approaches to zoning to guide change and protect what’s best about our neighborhoods.
Speakers: Colin Scarff and Rene Biberstein, Code Studio; Moderated by Ellen McCarthy, Ward3Vision
This event is part of our informational series as the District kicks off DC 2050 — the Comprehensive Plan rewrite in spring of 2025.
Review the recording on YouTube here.

Co-sponsored by Coalition for Smarter Growth and Ward3Vision


Written Recommendations: MoCo’s More Housing N.O.W. Package
Montgomery County has a strong record of supporting subsidized affordable housing, including making historic commitments to funding for affordable housing these past few years.
We have not been innovators in the same way in making sure our county has homes that are affordable to our middle class, young people, older adults looking to downsize, and others who do not qualify for affordable housing—yet are increasingly unable to find market-rate homes they can afford amongst our limited housing options.
DC Testimony: DC Office of Planning and DC Office of Zoning Performance 2025 Oversight Hearing
February 25, 2025
Dear Chair Mendelson:
Please accept these comments on behalf of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. CSG advocates for walkable, bikeable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities as the most sustainable and equitable way for the DC region to grow and provide opportunities for all.
We wish to comment on the performance of DC Office of Planning and DC Office of Zoning over the past year. The efforts of these are helping to bring much needed dedicated affordable housing to sought-after locations, and to help make housing in general more available. We commend the Office of Planning, Office of Zoning and the Zoning Commission for their commitment to public engagement, and careful, deliberative process.
Chevy Chase Comp Plan amendments and Small Area Plan implementation
We have engaged in key planning and zoning efforts, including a focus on Ward 3 and the Chevy Chase Small Area Plan, and rezoning process to implement important recommendations and policies from the Small Area Plan (ZC 23-24).
The zoning changes to the Chevy Chase area are modest, but important for opening up this exclusive neighborhood to low income residents, African American families, and other people of color who are greatly underrepresented in the Chevy Chase neighborhood. Discrimination has excluded people of color, both historically and systemically.
The rezoning changes will help to expand housing capacity and diversify Chevy Chase main street, and utilize the public land of the library site. This public site will benefit the community and the city by creating modern public facilities and dedicated affordable homes. Dedicated affordable homes in this neighborhood and Ward 3 are an extreme rarity. Figure 1 (below) illustrates this: at 12% of DC’s affordable housing goal for Ward 3/Rock Creek West we are hardly where we should be. The Chevy Case rezoning, the library mixed use redevelopment and the future rezoning of Wisconsin Avenue, and Connecticut Avenue should accelerate this part of town’s move towards a more inclusive community.
Figure 1
Source: DMPED 36,000 by 2025 Dashboard, emphasis added.
U Street Police & Fire Stations rezoning to implement Comp Plan
We have also engaged in the extensive Zoning Commission review process for the U Street Police Station (ZC 23-02 & ZC 23-25) to align the zoning of this site with the Comprehensive Plan amendments of 2021. This process took dozens of hours of public hearings. The resulting rezoning and future public land disposition offers the chance to build more than 100 dedicated affordable homes, along with market rate apartments, and new police and fire facilities in the highly sought-after U Street neighborhood. U Street has experienced a major decline in low income and African American residents, so this public land redevelopment contributes to reversing this trend.
Looking ahead
This coming year, we look forward to engaging in the follow up zoning changes from the Wisconsin Avenue Development Framework, Connecticut Avenue Development Guidelines, and launching of the Rhode Island Ave. corridor planning study. But the biggest planning activity is the Comp Plan rewrite. We are hopeful that this rewrite will take on the need to make it easier and less costly to build more housing in high demand locations, and fully utilize form based zoning as a critical tool to ensure great public spaces, and buildings scaled for people, and walkable neighborhoods. We ask the administration and Council to provide the resources needed to set up a successful process to address our housing and equitable development goals.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Sincerely,
Cheryl Cort
Policy Director

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.