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Advocacy
Smart Growth America advocates for federal actions that support housing, safe and efficient transportation options, and connected development. Our advocacy helps shape policies that make communities more healthy, prosperous, and resilient.
SGA's advocacy priorities
How to get involved
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Our Policy Priorities
Housing
We advocate for policies that expand and protect inclusive housing options for people of all incomes, ages, and family types. In the midst of a national housing crisis, affordability must be a priority. We support legislation and incentives that enable affordable homes in mixed-income, transit-connected neighborhoods—helping lower living costs and connect people to jobs, schools, and opportunity.
Advocacy highlights:
- Championing a tax code that supports affordable housing and community development:
- Opportunity Zones for Impact
- Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act
Land Use
We champion modernized land-use and zoning codes that support compact, mixed-use development—essential for walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. We advocate for replacing exclusionary, outdated regulations with policies that enable missing middle housing, infill, affordability, small-scale commercial uses, and meaningful community engagement.
Advocacy highlight:
- Supporting the elimination of barriers to housing: We support policies that encourage reforms to local zoning codes that unlock housing development, including legislation like the Housing Supply Frameworks Act.
- Facilitating brownfield redevelopment: We lead advocacy efforts to support legislation that facilitates brownfield remediation, including through reauthorizing and modernizing EPA’s brownfields program and reauthorizing the brownfield redevelopment tax incentive
Transportation
We push Congress to update the outdated federal transportation program to prioritize safety over speed, fix what’s broken, and invest in the full transportation system—including walking, biking, and transit. The current approach fails to meet its goals and drains taxpayer dollars. We advocate for a reimagined system that puts people and communities first, supports all ways of getting around, and uses public funds responsibly.
Advocacy highlight:
- Reimagining the federal transportation system: Our policy proposals for reauthorization call for radically updating the program and making it more accountable to taxpayers.
Our advocacy coalitions
Key advocacy effort
H.R. 815 | Brownfields Redevelopment Tax Incentive Reauthorization Act of 2025
This Act addresses the high costs of brownfield remediation by allowing developers to fully deduct the cleanup costs of contaminated sites in the year the expenses are incurred, rather than spreading them out over a decade.
Livable places. Healthy people. Shared prosperity.
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