Our friends at Futurewise will be our guests at our monthly speaker series on Tuesday, December 13th from 6:30 to 7:30pm via Zoom. With the state legislature resuming session in January, we will do a legislative preview. Futurewise has led the way in advocating for Growth Management Act (GMA) reform, housing abundance, and climate action. It could be an exciting session with missing middle legislation, statewide backyard cottage liberalization, and climate-focused GMA reform likely to be back, after all died ignoble deaths last session.
Futurewise’s government affairs liaison Bryce Yadon (a veteran of many legislative rumbles in Olympia) and its new state organizer Marcella Buser will break down the opportunities and obstacles before us in the upcoming session, when both the governor and legislators are pledging major action on housing.
The #Homes4WA campaign, of which Futurewise is a member, is bringing together housing advocates and gearing up to ensure Washington housing deficit, which is ranked the largest in the nation, is addressed this session. Sign up for Futurewise’s Week of Action happening concurrently with the event to get plugged in to the campaign.
Last session, statewide zoning reform unfortunately died in the state house. After getting watered down in chair Gerry Pollet’s Local Government Committee, supposedly to make it more palatable, the bill was never called to a floor vote. House Democrats have rejiggered the committee structure to provide a housing committee with more friendly leadership tasked with shepherding legislation through with fewer hiccups.
The line opens at 6:25pm Tuesday. Don’t worry. If you miss it live, the video of our discussion will also be posted to our YouTube and available on our website after the fact. And, as always, keep track of important upcoming events on our events calendar.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated statewide zoning reform (HB 1782) died in Local Government Committee. In fact, it was only watered down in that committee. It made it out of Local Government and Rules committee, too, but was never called to a floor vote.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrianizing streets, blanketing the city in bus lanes, and unleashing a mass timber building spree to end the affordable housing shortage and avert our coming climate catastrophe. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in East Fremont and loves to explore the city on his bike.