Futurewise 2024 Impact Report

As 2024 comes to a close and we enter a period of big decisions and uncertainty in 2025, the work of Futurewise has never been more essential. The country is looking for models for how to build a more affordable and inclusive economy, tackle climate change, and restore faith in our ability to work across differences to solve shared problems. Washington State has an opportunity to be a leader and model on all these fronts. This year’s impact report shows important role that Futurewise plays in these efforts.

We are building an economy that works for everyone, including those most struggling to get by. Housing and transportation are the two biggest household expenses. Futurewise is leading coalitions in Bellevue, Seattle, Spokane, and in the state legislature to reduce the cost of housing. We are ensuring that housing can be built close to jobs to maximize economic opportunity and in places that require less driving and less infrastructure to reduce transportation costs and lower taxes. We are also incorporating affordability, equitable development, and anti-displacement strategies into all our advocacy so that everyone benefits.

We are building climate resilient communities. The same policies that reduce housing, transportation, and infrastructure costs also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Over the last two decades, Washington State has led the nation in reducing vehicle miles traveled. We are building on that success with more mixed use, walkable neighborhoods, connected by transit. These same growth patterns help reduce energy use in buildings, and protect wetlands, forests, and farms that naturally sequester carbon. Through legal victories across the state, including a major State Supreme Court win, we are further helping protect these rural lands and preventing the development of new auto-dependent sprawl that locks people into using fossil fuels.

We are building places that connect people across differences. For too long, land use policies have been used to segregate and exclude by race and class. The more we live separately, and the more working-class people and people of color are denied access to communities of opportunity, the less we understand and empathize with what others need. Through the implementation of missing middle housing requirements and affirmatively furthering fair housing in comprehensive plans, Futurewise is breaking down these barriers and intentionally cultivating integrated neighborhoods. We are also entering partnerships to be more accountable to local communities, from Tribal governments on the Olympic Peninsula, to Latino community-based organizations in Casino Road in Everett, to rural activists in Ferry County.

I am inspired every day by our amazing staff, board, partners and supporters across the state. I hope that reading this report on our collective impacts in 2024 can also be inspiring to you. I don’t know everything that 2025 will bring, but I know that we will rise to the challenge together.

Alex Brennan
Futurewise Executive Director

Read the Futurewise 2024 Impact Report here