National Student Competition Yields Solutions to Housing Crisis

October 3, 2022— Today, Ivory Innovations announced three winners of Hack-A-House, a 24-hour “hackathon” created to engage students in proposing innovative solutions to address the housing affordability crisis. A total of $10,000 was awarded to student teams in three categories taking home $3,000 each, and $1,000 for the “People’s Choice” award which will be awarded on October 10th after voting has closed. Ivory Innovations partnered with six universities,The University of Utah, The University of California at Berkeley, The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, The University of Arizona, The University of Denver, and Howard University to host in-person kick-offs and virtual participation. The competition included more than 155 participants from 21 universities from across the nation.

“As an urban planning student, I am always looking for ways to blend research and best practices while putting innovation into practice,’’ said Dylan Cohen, MIT graduate student, and member of DUSP. “Hack-A-House gave my team the chance to get creative and solve a sliver of the housing crisis with a novel solution. This competition enabled us to put our creativity, design, implementation skills, and knowledge of industry trends and municipal policy to work. We’re proud to bring fresh ideas to a sector desperate for innovation in the face of mounting inequality.”

Students competed in three separate categories: Homelessness, Environmental Solutions and Construction Technology, and Sustainable Renting and Affordable Homeownership. The winners were selected out of 36 submissions by industry judges:

● Homelessness – Mate (University of California, Berkeley) created FOHO (Forever Home) Insurance, an affordable insurance provider that focuses on homelessness prevention.The insurance heavily delays and eliminates the possibility that people become unhoused.

● Environmental Solutions and Construction Technology – Team Beckwith (Harvard Graduate School of Design) proposed a district-level geothermal ownership structure for a particular community in South Boston. The issue of energy retrofits for existing building stock is receiving a lot of attention from federal and local officials around the country, making it a timely approach.

● Sustainable Renting and Affordable Homeownership – DUSP (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) took advantage of AB 2011 that recently passed in California to think about commercial conversions and how these spaces can be put to better use. The students proposed an app that would help cities and developers identify dead space that can be converted into affordable housing. Although the legislation has only passed in California, the concept itself is viable across the entire country.

All of the student’s submissions can be viewed on our website: ivory-innovations.org/2022-hackahouse-teams. Voting for the People’s Choice award will close on October 10th. Everyone is encouraged to vote for their favorite submission on Ivory Innovation’s website. Congratulations to all of the 2022 Hack-A-House winners! For more information about the Hack-A-House, the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability and Ivory Innovations visit www.ivory-innovations.org.

About Ivory Innovations: Ivory Innovations is an applied academic institution at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business dedicated to catalyzing high impact innovations in housing affordability. Ivory Innovations seeks to promote the most compelling ideas in housing affordability by working across sectors, providing monetary awards for groundbreaking innovations and leveraging its network and resources