News — SALT LAKE CITY — Ivory Innovations, an applied research center based at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, today announced the Top 10 finalists for its seventh annual Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability.
Each year, the Ivory Prize recognizes the most ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions to the critical issue of housing affordability. The award is designed to celebrate and reward innovators for their efforts and provide material support to advance their work.
The Top 10 finalist group represents efforts from across the U.S., delivering impactful and practical solutions to housing affordability challenges across three areas of focus: Construction & Design, Finance, and Policy & Regulatory reform. Finalists are selected by Ivory Innovations’ Advisory Board, a group of leading experts in disciplines across the housing ecosystem.
“The Top 10 finalists for this year’s Ivory Prize are addressing housing affordability with a remarkable mix of ingenuity and dedication,” said Kent Colton, Chair of the Advisory Board. “Their efforts highlight the innovative and practical ways we can expand access to housing affordability — whether through financing models that empower buyers, construction advancements that lower costs, or policies that remove barriers to homebuilding.”
The Top 10 finalists for the 2025 Ivory Prize are as follows:
Finance:
- FutureProof leverages AI-driven technology to assess climate risks, enabling homeowners to reduce insurance costs by enhancing their property’s resilience to disasters.
- The Homes for the Future fund is a shared equity initiative designed to help families of color purchase homes and build generational wealth by acquiring single-family rental properties, maintaining them as affordable rentals, and transitioning them to homeownership through community-based partnerships.
- Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund
- The Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund supports affordable housing production by offering developers low-cost, flexible pre-construction financing to accelerate modular construction.
Policy & Regulatory Reform:
- : Tax Increment Financing for Vacant Lot Development
- The City of Muskegon leverages tax increment financing to transform vacant lots into affordable single-family homes, recovering costs through future property tax gains.
- L.A. County’s Housing for Health and UCLA’s California Policy Lab use predictive modeling to proactively identify and support households at high risk of homelessness and deliver targeted interventions before eviction occurs.
- Florida’s Live Local Act, implemented with technical assistance from the Florida Housing Coalition, expands affordability throughout the state by combining zoning reforms, financing tools, preemption strategies, and permit streamlining.
Construction & Design:
- Conversions+ is a software-driven solution that rapidly evaluates the feasibility of office-to-residential conversions, helping developers revitalize underused spaces with a faster, more sustainable, and more cost-effective alternative to new construction.
- The Incremental Development Alliance trains small-scale developers and community partners to create naturally occurring affordable housing through workshops and mentorship, fostering neighborhood revitalization and local wealth-building.
- The Lower Sioux Indian Community leads the country’s only vertically integrated hempcrete operation, building affordable, healthy, and sustainable homes.
- Reframe Systems deploys microfactories to produce net-zero modular housing, offering energy-efficient homes with faster timelines and lower costs.
The winners of the 2025 Ivory Prize will be announced on May 20 at 10 a.m. MT on . Each will receive a share of the $300,000 grand prize.
ABOUT THE DAVID ECCLES SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
The Eccles experience provides a world-class business education with a unique, entrepreneurial focus on real-world scenarios where students put what they learn into practice long before graduation. Founded in 1917 and educating more than 6,000 students annually, the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business offers nine undergraduate majors, four MBAs, nine other graduate programs, a Ph.D. in seven areas and executive education curricula. The Eccles School is also home to more than 20 institutes, centers, and initiatives, which deliver academic research and support an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and innovation. For more information, visit Eccles.Utah.edu or call 801-581-7676.
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