As the housing crisis escalates, innovative solutions are essential for tackling the affordability challenges facing communities across the country. With rising costs and supply failing to keep pace, creative, scalable, and feasible solutions have never been more pressing. Since 2018, Ivory Innovations, an applied academic institution at the University of Utah, has been catalyzing high-impact, innovative solutions to the housing affordability crisis through our flagship initiative: the Ivory Prize.
The Ivory Prize is one of the longest standing and most prestigious awards of its kind, recognizing the 25 most innovative, feasible, and scalable solutions to housing affordability each year. The Prize considers innovations in three categories – construction/design, finance, and policy/regulatory reform – and awards winners in each category with up to $100,000 in prize money. Additionally, organizations selected as part of the top 25 group of finalists join the Ivory Prize portfolio network and receive a myriad of non-financial benefits including connections to funders, pro bono consulting support, and summer student interns funded by Ivory Innovations. This year marks the seventh year of Ivory Innovations’ effort to shine a light on the most promising housing solutions in the United States. The nomination window for the 2025 Ivory Prize is currently open and closes December 6, 2024. To nominate an organization, visit ivoryprize.org.
Over the years, we have evaluated over 1,000 innovative solutions and through our finalists, have created a comprehensive Housing Innovation Database showcasing over 500 innovative organizations across the country. This database has helped us identify the following trends that not only increase supply and lower costs, but also tackle barriers and inefficiencies within the housing ecosystem:
- Upzoning and permitting innovations demonstrate that modifying land use regulations can not only unlock new housing supply opportunities but also lower costs by allowing for density and faster turnaround times for homebuilders.
- Efforts to democratize zoning codes enable greater transparency and help to better inform governments and developers as they plan for housing and growth.
- New technologies and models are increasing accessibility to government-funded initiatives by creating simple displays to show available affordable housing units in a region, enhancing the efficiency of deploying federal rental assistance funds, and bolstering access to down payment assistance and home buying education among people of color.
- Industrialized construction methods (e.g., building homes in factories) increase worker safety and allow for nontraditional recruitment, upskilling, and thoughtful automation of dangerous tasks while addressing labor shortages that drive up the cost of construction, making housing more expensive.
Our 2024 Ivory Prize recognized 4 winners and 25 finalists from around the United States for their industry-leading solutions to improve housing affordability. These solutions are representative of the innovators the Ivory Prize seeks to celebrate and National Housing Conference Members may be interested in the work of the particular organizations below:
- City of San Diego: ADU Bonus Program (winner) – San Diego’s ADU Bonus Program allows for the creation of “missing middle” housing by creating increased density as an effective local incentive to build affordable accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
- Compass Working Capital (finalist) – Since 2010, Compass has developed and implemented a series of innovations to expand the scope and impact of the Family Self-Sufficiency program, the nation’s largest wealth-building program for families with low incomes, made available in HUD-assisted housing.
- FirstRepair (winner) – A nonprofit taking a local-to-national approach in the movement for Black reparations by prioritizing housing-related redress as a first tangible step to repair the legacies of slavery in the U.S.
- FwdSlash (finalist) – Through novel contracts with managed Medicaid that generates up to $30 billion annually in health cost savings at scale, FwdSlash is enabling communities to guide the healthcare investments of these savings to increase housing supply and services for people experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness.
- HON Partners (finalist) – High Opportunity Neighborhood Partners is a full-service real estate company that acquires quality homes in High Opportunity Neighborhoods and provides these homes, along with supportive services, to Section 8 Voucher holders.
- Minneapolis Public Housing Authority: Family Housing Expansion Project (finalist) – The Family Housing Expansion Project built 84 new, deeply affordable family homes on 16 scattered sites in Minneapolis by leveraging upzoning, modular construction, and financial partnerships.
- Montgomery County (winner) – The Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, Maryland partnered with Montgomery County to create the Housing Production Fund, a $100 million revolving fund used to develop mixed-income social housing.
- Pronto Housing (finalist) – Pronto provides software to streamline affordable housing resident qualifications so property teams can fill units faster and improve the resident experience.
- Villa (winner) – A homebuilding platform building focused on “missing middle” infill locations using prefabricated homes built to the highest HUD code standards.
Innovation is needed more than ever. The Ivory Prize represents collaboration across an array of sectors with the same goal in mind: lowering the cost of housing. We invite you to share this opportunity with entrepreneurs, companies, nonprofits, government entities who are taking innovative approaches to this affordability crisis. Anyone may nominate an organization making an impact in this space and self nominations are encouraged.
Together we can build a future where affordable housing is within reach for all. Join us on this journey to improve the housing ecosystem. and we thank you for your help in sharing, recommending, and advancing innovative ideas.
The nomination window for the 2025 Ivory Prize is currently open and closes December 6, 2024. For more information or to nominate an organization visit ivoryprize.org or email info@ivoryinnovations.org.