Category: CSG in the News

CSG in the News: County Council votes to abandon M-83 highway plan

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

July 29, 2025 | Ginny Bixby | Bethesda Magazine

An advocacy group that lobbied against the highway plan praised the council’s decision Tuesday in a press release.

“Plans for M-83 were based on obsolete planning assumptions that are out of sync with what we know today about effectively meeting transportation demand and protecting community and environmental health,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Smarter Growth. “With their vote to remove M-83, the County Council showed we are ready to offer upcounty residents transportation solutions that will offer real relief—not a costly and environmentally harmful false promise.” 

Read the full story here.

CSG in the News: Does D.C. have the worst traffic? Not so fast.

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

July 26, 2025 | Rachel Weiner and John D. Harden | The Washington Post

“It’s not news that a successful metropolitan region like the D.C. region has a lot of traffic,” said Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a nonprofit that advocates denser urban areas with less need to drive. Concentrating future growth near transit, he said, “is the best way for our region to grow without choking on traffic.”

Read the full story here.

CSG in the News: In raucous session, County Council votes 8-3 to approve controversial housing zoning change

Posted on by Carrie Kisicki

July 23, 2025 | Ginny Bixby | Bethesda Today

The Coalition for Smarter Growth released a statement prior to Tuesday’s vote voicing support for the zoning change. The nonprofit advocates for “walkable, bikeable, inclusive, and transit-oriented communities” in the Washington, D.C. area, according to its website.

“By making it easier to build more duplexes, triplexes, and small apartments near transit and jobs, [the] ZTA is an important step toward more sustainable housing options in Montgomery County,” the statement said. “Measures like this that take on the structural problems feeding our housing shortage are a necessary step to achieve our shared vision of a sustainable, inclusive county for all.”

Read the full story here.

CSG in the News: Critics press their concerns as vote on I-495 Southside Express toll lanes plan looms

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

July 30, 2025 | Scott McCaffrey | FFXnow

“From the beginning, VDOT’s study has been fatally flawed,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

Without more analysis, there is no logical reason for the proposal to move forward, he said.

“The project is not ready,” Schwartz said.

Read the full story here.

CSG in the News: Montgomery County Council to vote on ‘missing middle’ housing plan

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

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

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

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.”

CSG in the News: Controversial workforce housing bill up for council vote Tuesday

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

July 21, 2025 | Ginny Bixby | Bethesda Magazine

“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, at a public hearing on the legislation in March. “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.”

CSG in the News: ‘Missing middle’ housing plan in Montgomery County faces backlash

Posted on by Elena Sorokina

July 21, 2025 | Dana Munro | Washington Post

But that trend of people being priced out of Montgomery County is already happening, said Carrie Kisicki, a 26-year-old Silver Spring resident and Montgomery advocacy manager with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, who is in favor of the change.

More units, and especially units in larger complexes that will have the price restrictions under the zoning change, will help increase inventory and the variety of homes affordable to younger and middle-income residents, she said.

“The zoning status quo isn’t working, either for affordability or for the environment,” Kisicki said. “We need to be looking at both the subsidized affordable housing investments but also thinking more expansively about what affordability means when so many people in our communities are experiencing struggles with housing affordability that don’t always fall into the traditional categories we think about.”

CSG in the News: Montgomery County makes bus rides free, an idea that is gaining traction

Posted on by Carrie Kisicki

June 28, 2025 | Dana Munro and Rachel Weiner | Washington Post
Also featuring Montgomery for All Steering Committee Mike Larkin!

One major concern of the free buses, Larkin said, is that the lack of revenue coming in could justify the county disinvesting in the system, especially as Montgomery County deals with the economic impacts of the Trump administration’s massive federal spending cuts and job cuts.

Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a group that advocates for more accessible communities around the D.C. region, agreed.

Residents and lawmakers “might see other problems going on in the community that are more visible to them or maybe more part of their everyday experience and wonder ‘should transit be a priority or not’ and it absolutely needs to be,” she said.

Read the full story here.

CSG in the News: Montgomery County’s Flash BRT on 355 will reduce travel times, if and when it is completed

Posted on by Carrie Kisicki

June 27, 2025 | Ethan Goffman | Greater Greater Washington

“This is a plan that has been on the books a long time, and they’re taking lots of steps to finally build this network out,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery Advocacy Manager at the Coalition for Smarter Growth. […]

Kisicki also emphasized the need for better pedestrian comfort and safety: “It’s already a very wide road, it’s already a harrowing place for pedestrians, it’s very much built as a suburban arterial, not considering the experience of people outside of cars.” Planned expansion of the right of way for a buffer and shared-use path will be welcome, she said, and will work in tandem with improved transit. “This is a huge investment,” she emphasized. “This is our shot to do it right.”

Read the full story here.