Ten Innovations to Address America’s Housing Affordability Crisis

[April 20, 2021 – SALT LAKE CITY, UT] – Today, Ivory Innovations announced the Top 10 finalists for the 2021 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability, a national award to recognize ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions to housing affordability. These finalists present tangible solutions as Americans are increasingly being priced out of safe and affordable housing.

Winners will be announced on May 18, 2021, via livestream (Register Here).

“We are at a crisis moment in terms of affordability driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a shortage of existing housing inventory, disruptions in the supply chains and escalating costs and exacerbated long-standing racial inequities. These are massive issues that demand new and innovative solutions,” said Kent Colton, Chair of the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability Advisory Board. “Focusing on the entrepreneurs and sharing their innovative ideas is what the Ivory Prize is all about and this year’s Top 10 finalists have the potential to make a decisive impact.”

In its third year, the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability is an annual award recognizing solutions to housing affordability across three distinct categories: finance, construction and design, public policy, and regulatory reform.

Innovations in Construction and Design: Rapidly rising construction and material costs are making innovations in Construction and Design increasingly necessary and impactful for affordability. Finalists in this category are pioneering new material applications and construction methods that are more efficient, scalable, and importantly, more sustainable, resulting in greater affordability.

Sustainable Bamboo with BamCore – Windsor, California: Since April 2020, “unprecedented spikes in lumber prices have added more than $24,000 to the price of the average, new single-family home, and nearly $9,000 to the price of a multifamily home,” according to the National Home builders Association. BamCore’s innovative bamboo-based framing solution has the potential to address this crippling rise in material costs, provide a more climate positive upply chain, reduce the need for skilled labor and speed up the build time by more than 50 percent, while producing a much more energy-efficient home.

3-D Printing with ICON – Austin, Texas:

Productivity in construction has declined by nearly half over the past fifty years. ICON seeks to reverse this trend through advanced construction technologies providing dignified housing at scale by leveraging robotics, 3-D printing technology, software, and advanced materials. Icon aims to create dramatic improvements in speed, quality, resiliency and sustainability.

Healthier Buildings with Curtis + Ginsberg Architects (C+GA) – New York City, New York:

Often sustainability and affordability are competitive goals for housing development. However, C+GA is pioneering new approaches to break through the budgetary barriers that previously made building energy-efficient and affordable multifamily housing difficult. C+GA has designed the largest completed Passive House affordable housing building in the United States. Their primary strategy in designing energy-efficient Passive House standards is to reduce the operational cost of buildings, in turn, maintaining affordability long after a building is built, while providing healthier buildings for residents.

Innovations in Finance: Often, innovations in finance are the quickest and most scalable solutions to housing affordability. This year’s finalists work to improve homebuyer and homeownership education, rehabbing and preserving naturally occurring affordable housing,and developing innovative solutions to create supplemental income for homeowners and those needing affordable rental opportunities.

Rehabbing Lives and Homes with Acts Housing – Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

For families with the largest barriers to homeownership, access to traditional loan capital is often impossible. Acts Housing provides a replicable model that has enabled more than 950 families to purchase and rehabilitate distressed properties into stable homes through homebuyer education, a path to attaining loan capital, real estate services, and support in the home rehab process all under one roof.

Preserving Affordability with Housing Impact Fund – Charlotte, North Carolina:

The preservation and rehab of existing homes is proving to be one of the most effective strategies to address affordability. The Housing Impact Fund is an innovative social impact equity fund topreserve and create affordability for thousands of Charlotteans that earn between 30% and 80% of the area median income in naturally occurring affordable housing in neighborhoods across the city.

Preparing for Homeownership with Keep by Framework – Boston, Massachusetts:

Framework® Homeownership’s Keep by Framework helps home buyers understand the process to purchase a home and how best to maintain and stay in that home for the long term. With an emphasis on first-time, first-generation potential homeowners, Keep guides users through the entire process of purchasing a home, with a keen focus on how to assist homebuyers confronting structural and persistent racial barriers, to democratize the homebuying process.

Senior Homesharing with Silvernest – Denver, Colorado:

Taking advantage of existing homes, while generating supplemental income is a unique and low-cost way to increase the overall supply of housing. Utilizing new COVID-conscious tools, Silvernest is a homesharing platform that targets empty nesters, boomers, and those with extra space. It provides them with the opportunity to find a housemate, as well as create an additional form of income.

Innovations in Public Policy and Regulatory Reform:

Public policy and regulation can represent significant barriers to housing affordability, but there is growing groundswell of action to instead achieve positive systemic impacts on affordability.

Finalists present a diverse set of approaches, including a comprehensive and solution to financing ADUs reserved for low-income residents, improving community communication on new developments, and combating racial equality, reentry, and NIMBYism.

Accelerating ADUs with City of Pasadena – Pasadena, California: Accessory Dwelling Units

(ADUs) are beginning to break through many policy, financial and construction barriers that have limited scalability. However, helping homebuyers navigate the process, financing and ensuring that these new units support affordability has been a challenge. The Pasadena Second Unit ADU Program provides “Comprehensive Assistance” for financing, designing, permitting, and constructing a new ADU in the City of Pasadena to provide housing for very low income Section 8 households that could be a model for cities nationwide.

Adding New Voices in Development with CoUrbanize – Cambridge, Massachusetts:

Engaging communities in thoughtful discussions on growth and development are critical to allow for greater supply of housing. CoUrbanize is an online platform designed to connect developers and planners to their neighbors. With Covid-19, CoUrbanize has become an effective source for community members to continue to engage in the development processes while in person public/community meetings are on hold. This approach also helps to ensure that the loudest voices are not the only ones weighing in on a project.

Housing After Incarceration with Impact Justice / The Homecoming Project – Oakland, California:

Thousands of Americans are not only priced out of affordable housing but are often intentionally left out of many housing options. The Homecoming Project is a program that ensures successful reentry back into communities by providing safe and stable housing and a welcoming host. Formerly incarcerated people are able to integrate more easily into the community by quick placement into stable housing right out of prison.

These finalists will be eligible for more than two hundred thousand dollars in prize monies that will be distributed between at least three winners selected from each of the three award components. In addition to financial support, the Ivory Innovations network includes interns, capital partners, and strategic planning. This year, Ivory Innovations is partnering with the Housing Lab at the Terner Center at UC Berkeley to send a top entrant through the accelerator.

About Ivory Innovations:

Ivory Innovations is an applied academic institution and foundation 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 Innovations in Housing, and internships that allow students to be at the center of the Ivory Prize search. For more information about the Ivory Prize and Ivory Innovations, visit www.ivory-innovations.org.

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