The Who’s Who of Housing Innovation: The Ivory Prize Top 10 Finalists Announced
- Ivory Innovations Team
- Apr 17
- 3 min read
SALT LAKE CITY — Ivory Innovations, a nonprofit that operates as an applied academic institution at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business, today announced the top 10 finalists for its seventh annual Ivory Prize.
Each year, the Ivory Prize recognizes ambitious, feasible solutions to housing affordability. The award is designed to celebrate and reward innovators for their efforts and provide material support to advance their projects.
The 2025 Ivory Prize Top 10 finalists represent efforts from across the U.S., delivering impactful and practical solutions to housing affordability in one of three categories: construction & design, finance, and policy & regulatory reform. Finalists are selected by the Ivory Prize 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 home building.”
The Top 10 finalists of 2025 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.
Grounded Solutions Network: Homes for the Future
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.
Housing Accelerator Fund: 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:
City of Muskegon: 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.
State of Florida and Florida Housing Coalition: Live Local Act
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, and 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.
Incremental Development Alliance
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.
Lower Sioux Indian Community: Hempcrete Program
The Lower Sioux Indian Community leads the country’s only vertically integrated hempcrete operation, building affordable, healthy, and sustainable homes.
Reframe Systems deploys micro-factories 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 ivoryinnovations.org, each will receive a share of the $300,000 grand prize.
