February 18, 2025
Top 25 Housing Innovations of 2025
Today, Ivory Innovations announced its top 25 finalists for its annual Ivory Prize.
Ivory Innovations announces top 25 selections for the annual Ivory Prize
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 dedicated to catalyzing high-impact innovations in housing affordability, today announced its top 25 finalists for its annual Ivory Prize.
The Ivory Prize is an award recognizing ambitious but feasible solutions to housing affordability and is designed to award innovators for their efforts and provide material support to advance their work.
A core mission of the Ivory Prize is to amplify the impact of housing innovators in three key areas: construction & design, finance, and policy & regulatory reform. In April, Ivory Innovations will perform more thorough diligence to narrow its top-25 list down to 10 finalists and will choose one winner from each of the aforementioned categories. Those three winners will split a $300K grand prize.
Our 2024 Top 25 finalists have helped create over 3,000 homes, engaged with over 150,000 users on platforms that make housing more accessible, and raised over a billion dollars to grow their impact.
The Ivory Prize began to take shape in 2017 during a period of increasing concern for housing undersupply, and the first competition was held in 2018-2019. As of 2024, Ivory Innovations has distributed $1.3 million through the Ivory Prize.
The search committee looks for solutions that combine elements of finance, policy, and design and construction. Innovators include small- and large-scale companies, nonprofits, and government entities.
“We are passionate about increasing the impact and scale of new ideas with the potential to improve the housing ecosystem,” said Brooklyn Lindsey, Director of Innovations, Public Policy & Legal Affairs at Ivory Innovations. “The organizations recognized this year in our Top 25 group are notable for the strength of their innovations, focus on affordability, and optimism to build solutions that can make a real difference for the country.”
The Top 25 list for 2025 is as follows (listed by category and alphabetical order):
Construction & Design
Incremental Development Alliance
Lower Sioux Indian Community: Hempcrete Program
Finance
Arrive Home: Earned Equity Program
Dearborn Realtist Board: Community Receivership Training Program
Grounded Solutions Network: Homes for the Future
Housing Accelerator Fund: Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund
Transition Projects: Rent Well
Policy & Regulatory Reform
City of Boston: Office to Residential Conversion Program
City of Muskegon: Tax Increment Financing for Vacant Lot Development
Green & Healthy Homes Initiative
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority: Master Lease Program
Philadelphia VIP: Tangled Title Fund
State of Florida and Florida Housing Coalition: Live Local Act
About Ivory Innovations: Ivory Innovations is dedicated to catalyzing innovative solutions in housing affordability. We work with students, entrepreneurs, and experts to source, support, and scale the most compelling housing solutions through the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability and Hack-A-House. In Utah, we put innovation into practice through our development of hundreds of affordable housing units each year.
For more information about the Ivory Prize and Ivory Innovations, visit www.ivoryinnovations.org.