25 Innovative Solutions to the Housing Affordability Crisis

Nonprofit organization Ivory Innovations has announced the Top 25 Finalists for the 2024 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. Finalist organizations demonstrated dedication to housing innovation with feasible, scalable, and ambitious approaches to critical challenges faced by builders, residents, and communities across the country.

The Ivory Prize is one of the longest standing and most prestigious awards of its kind in the United States, culminating in $300,000 of grants to winners in three categories: Construction & Design, Finance, and Policy & Regulatory Reform.

Last year, the three companies who took first place were:

• For Construction & Design: Diamond Age, a construction automation company specializing in 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and industrial-scale robotics to mass-produce single-family homes.
• For Finance: Dearfield Fund for Black Wealth, a philanthropic organization committed to closing the racial wealth gap by providing down-payment assistance to first-time Black and African American homebuyers.
• For Policy & Regulatory Reform: Co-winners National Zoning Atlas, a collaboration of researchers dedicated to digitizing, demystifying, and democratizing U.S. zoning codes; and PermitFlow, a permit software that streamlines and digitizes the permitting process.

2024 Ivory Prize Finalists to solve the Housing Affordability Crisis

This year's competition marks the sixth year of Ivory Innovations’ effort to shine a light on the most promising housing solutions. This year's finalists join 122 others in Ivory Innovations’ network of innovators dedicated to advancing housing affordability.

Finalists for the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability are selected by the Ivory Innovations’ Advisory Board, which is composed of the top minds in housing across the U.S.

Here are the 2024 Ivory Prize Top 25 Finalists (listed by category and alphabetical order):

Construction & Design

1. Apis Cor. Apis Cor develops highly mobile 3D printers and construction materials for homebuilding.

2. Capsule. Capsule’s team of engineers, machines, and assembly technicians manufacture buildings as components to increase the number of units of housing available.

3. Canvas. 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.

4. Onx. Onx is accelerating a new era of homes and neighborhoods, combining proprietary X+ Construction technology, design, and advanced material science expertise in concrete.

5. On3. On3 is an AI/Mobile Based Learning Application for fieldworkers in construction, trade contractor, and manufacturing industries.

6. PathHouse. The PathHouse modular housing solution is the first-ever application of true Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) techniques to our nation’s housing problem.

7. Revalue.io. Revalue.io prepares communities for the transition to clean energy by removing home health hazards and fossil fuel based systems.

8. TANGOBuilder. TANGOBuilder uses AI to automate buildings’ structural design by transforming architectural sketches into construction-ready blueprints in seconds.

9. Villa. Villa is a homebuilding platform that focuses on building prefab homes in “missing middle” infill locations.

Finance

10. Foyer. Foyer is designed to be the entryway to homeownership for the next generation of first time homebuyers.

11. HIAS: Housing Guarantee Fund. 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.

12. Home Lending Pal. Home Lending Pal transforms the process of determining eligibility for HUD vouchers to pay for a mortgage and other home-buying assistance programs.

13. HON Partners. High Opportunity Neighborhood (HON) Partners is a full-service real estate company that acquires quality homes in High Opportunity Neighborhoods.

14. Montgomery County Housing Production Fund. The Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) of Montgomery County, Maryland partnered with Montgomery County to create the Housing Production Fund (HPF).

15. Rent Butter. Rent Butter aims to create a resident screening solution that offers valuable and unbiased insights to housing providers while expanding housing options for individuals with less-than-ideal credit histories.

16. Roam. Roam offers a unique solution to help homebuyers wind back the clock on interest rates by purchasing a home with a low-rate assumable mortgage, saving them up to 50% on monthly payments compared to buying with a traditional mortgage.

17. US Modular Capital. US Modular Capital is the only lender exclusively dedicated to financing volumetric construction.

Policy & Regulatory Reform

18. City of Detroit: Land Value Tax Plan. Detroit is proposing a Land Value Tax plan which would provide long-overdue relief to homeowners by reducing property taxes while encouraging growth and reinvestment.

19. City of San Diego: ADU Bonus program. The City of San Diego has implemented a Bonus Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Program that allows for increased density for Affordable ADUs.

20. Compass Working Capital. 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.

21. First Repair. First Repair has taken a local-to-national approach in the centuries-long movement for Black reparations.

22. FwdSlash. FwdSlash is bringing the healthcare industry into housing through novel contracts with Medicaid.

23. Minneapolis Public Housing Authority: Family Housing Expansion Project. Minneapolis Public Housing Authority helps provide 26,000 people with quality, safe, and affordable housing through its various housing assistance programs.

24. Placemate. Placemate helps tourism-based communities thrive by unlocking new affordable rental housing for the local workforce.

25. Pronto Housing. Pronto Housing provides software to streamline affordable housing resident qualification so property teams can fill units faster and improve the resident experience.

To learn more about each of the 25 finalists, visit Ivory Innovations.