Ivory Prize Top 10 Finalists Announced
U.S. organizations recognized for innovative solutions to the housing crisis
Ivory Prize Top 10 finalists seek to address housing affordability issues through creativity in the areas of construction and design, finance, and public policy and regulatory reform.
APRIL 16, 2024 — The nation’s ongoing housing affordability crisis is one of paramount urgency. To that end, Ivory Innovations today announces its Top 10 Finalists for the 2024 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability.
The prize awards organizations that demonstrate ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions to the housing affordability crisis.
“This year’s Ivory Prize finalists are housing visionaries. They have taken a commitment to affordable housing innovation and turned it into real action”
“This year’s Ivory Prize finalists are housing visionaries. They have taken a commitment to affordable housing innovation and turned it into real action,” said Kent Colton, Chairman of Ivory Innovations’ advisory board. “These organizations focus on public-sector innovation, creative financial models, and reinvention in the construction industry. Each year, the Ivory Prize turns innovations into solutions, and we are all excited to see the continued impact of this year’s finalists.”
Founded in 2017, Ivory Innovations is a nonprofit that operates as an applied academic institution at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business dedicated to catalyzing high-impact innovations in housing affordability.
This year’s finalists are as follows(listed by category and alphabetical order):
Construction and Design
In the Construction and Design category, this year’s finalists feature both daring technological solutions to tackle labor shortages and practical, replicable models that help speed the production of housing supply. These solutions ensure that labor shortages won’t halt necessary housing development and that buyers and renters have access to higher quality and, most importantly, affordable homes.
Automating Drywall Installation: Canvas | San Francisco, CA
Canvas is helping contractors build in bold new ways by putting better tools in the hands of skilled workers. With Canvas’s worker-controlled robotic machine, contractors are able to make drywall finishing safer and more attractive to a shrinking pool of skilled labor while realizing unmatched metrics for schedule, cost, quality and safety.
Streamlining Construction Labor & Interior Installs: Capsule | Anaheim, California
Capsule exists to bring a new streamlined construction workforce online. Their team of engineers, machines, and assembly technicians manufacture buildings as components to increase the number of units of housing available. In everything, Capsule does more with less.
Powering Microlearning with AI: On3 | Madison, WI
On3 is an award-winning AI/Mobile Based Learning Application for field workers in construction, trade contractor, and manufacturing industries. On3 allows companies to seamlessly capture their critical work processes in video, create multilingual video-based learning modules, and transform their teams by using artificial intelligence (AI) to verify retention of critical knowledge among frontline personnel.
Scaling a Platform for Prefab Homes: Villa | San Francisco, CA
Villa is a homebuilding platform that focuses on building prefab homes in “missing middle” infill locations. Villa uses an asset-light approach by partnering with factories to build homes based on Villa’s designs. With a focus on technology, modern design, quality construction, and affordability, Villa is creating a scalable solution that can meet the needs for more attainable housing production across America.
Finance
Each year, finalists in the Finance category find new ways to address systemic and financial barriers for renters and homebuyers. This year, these organizations have taken specialized approaches to financing increased housing supply, creating space for refugees and people in poverty, and providing opportunities for the next generation of homebuyers.
Opening the Door to Homeownership: Foyer | New York, NY
Foyer is designed to be the entryway to homeownership for the next generation of first-time homebuyers, providing confidence at a time when homeownership has never been more difficult. Foyer offers members personalized financial planning together with a tax-advantaged First Time Homebuyer Savings Account aimed at helping them reach their homeownership goals faster and more responsibly.
Unlocking Rental Supply for Refugees: HIAS: Housing Guarantee Fund | Silver Spring, MD
The HIAS Housing Guarantee Fund (HGF) is an efficient and sustainable mechanism for mitigating rental market forces that exclude newly arrived refugees from housing opportunities and expose them to homelessness. By providing financial backstopping for refugees’ first leases in the U.S., the HGF reduces risk to housing providers and increases housing access, affordability, and stability for recently arrived refugees.
Improving Access to High Opportunity Neighborhoods: HON Partners | Dallas, TX
High Opportunity Neighborhood Partners is a full-service real estate company that acquires quality homes in High Opportunity Neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods where a child born into a low-income family has a greater chance to close the wealth and income gap. They provide these homes along with supportive services (Services Enriched Housing) exclusively to Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher holders in order to break the cycle of poverty.
Activating Public-Funded Social Housing: Montgomery County Housing Production Fund | Kensington, MD
The Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) of Montgomery County, Maryland partnered with Montgomery County to create the Housing Production Fund (HPF) in 2021. The HPF is now expected to produce as many as 2,000 new housing units in the county by the end of the decade, of which at least 30% will be affordable. The Housing Production Fund (HPF) is a $100 million revolving fund that provides low-cost construction financing for the development of publicly owned, mixed-income housing. Jurisdictions across the country are now exploring how they can adapt this model as explored in recent stories in Vox and the New York Times.
Public Policy and Regulatory Reform
Finalists in the Public Policy and Regulatory Reform category include both government-led and nonprofit solutions and range from local to national in scale. The current and potential impact of these organizations on new ways of approaching housing density, supporting wealth creation for renters, and scaling the deployment of local reparations programs is vast. Each provides a catalytic model for other organizations around the country to learn from in their own housing affordability initiatives.
Crafting the Next Generation of ADU Incentives: City of San Diego: ADU Bonus Program | San Diego, CA
The City of San Diego has implemented an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Bonus Program that offers increased density for Affordable ADUs. This incentive has led to the construction of deed-restricted and naturally affordable ADUs throughout the city.
Supporting Wealth Creation for Families of Color: Compass Working Capital | Boston, MA
Compass Working Capital (Compass) partners with families with low incomes - primarily families led by Black and/or Latina women - to build savings and assets as a pathway out of poverty. 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.
Informing & Empowering Localized Reparations: FirstRepair | Evanston, IL
FirstRepair has taken a local-to-national approach in the centuries-long movement for Black reparations. Localities nationwide, like Evanston, IL, are prioritizing housing-related redress as a first tangible step to repair the legacies of slavery in the United States.
About Ivory Innovations: Ivory Innovations is dedicated to catalyzing innovative solutions in housing affordability. Utilizing its network and resources, Ivory Innovations promotes the most compelling ideas in housing affordability, working across sectors and providing monetary awards with the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. Additionally, in partnership with the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, Ivory Innovations places students at the center of its efforts, through Hack-A-House – an annual entrepreneurial competition – as well as scholarships, a course on housing innovation, and internships that place students at the core of the Ivory Prize search. For more information about the Ivory Prize and Ivory Innovations, visit www.ivoryinnovations.org.