Ivory Innovations announced its next round of finalists for the 2024 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability, recognizing 11 organizations that demonstrate ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions to the housing affordability crisis.
Selected from a top 25 list across three categories—construction and design, finance, and public policy and regulatory reform—these finalists “are housing visionaries,” says Kent Colton, chairman of Ivory Innovations’ advisory board.
“They have taken a commitment to affordable housing innovation and turned it into real action,” continues Colton. “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.”
The 2024 Ivory Prize winners will be announced May 16. See below for the 11 contenders listed by category and alphabetical order:
Construction & Design
Canvas: Canvas is helping contractors build in new ways by putting better tools in the hands of skilled workers. With Canvas’ worker-controlled robotic machine, contractors are able to make drywall finishing safer and more attractive to a shrinking pool of skilled labor.
Capsule: 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.
On3: On3 is an artificial intelligence (AI)/mobile-based learning application for field workers. It allows companies to seamlessly capture their critical work processes in video, create multilingual video-based learning modules, and transform their teams by using AI to verify retention of critical knowledge.
Villa: Villa is a home building platform that focuses on building prefab homes in “missing-middle” infill locations. It uses an asset-light approach by partnering with factories to build homes based on Villa’s designs.
Finance
Foyer: Foyer is designed to be the entryway to homeownership for the next generation of first-time home buyers. Foyer offers members personalized financial planning together with a first-time home buyer savings account.
HIAS Housing Guarantee Fund: The HIAS Housing Guarantee Fund is an efficient and sustainable mechanism for mitigating rental market forces that exclude newly arrived refugees from housing opportunities and expose them to homelessness.
HON Partners: High Opportunity Neighborhood Partners acquires quality homes in high-opportunity neighborhoods in order to provide these homes—along with supportive services—to Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher holders.
Montgomery County Housing Production Fund: The Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County, Maryland, partnered with Montgomery County to create the Housing Production Fund (HPF). The HPF is a $100 million revolving fund that provides low-cost construction financing for the development of publicly owned, mixed-income housing.
Policy & Regulatory Reform
City of San Diego ADU Bonus Program: San Diego has implemented a Bonus Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Program that allows for increased density for affordable ADUs. This incentive has led to the construction of deed-restricted ADUs and naturally affordable ADUs throughout the city.
Compass Working Capital: Compass Working Capital 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.
First Repair: First Repair has taken a local-to-national approach in the centuries-long movement for Black reparations. Localities nationwide are prioritizing housing-related redress as a first tangible step to repair the legacies of slavery in the United States.
