Newswise — SALT LAKE CITY, UT – Today, Ivory Innovations revealed three housing innovators as the winners of the 2020 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. The winners are Rhino in Finance, Symbium in Policy and Regulatory Reform, and Entekra in Construction and Design. In addition, the Ivory Prize recognized the State of Oregon and City of Minneapolis as co-honorees for a new category that focuses on public sector innovation. The winners will be awarded a total of $200,000 and provided access to Ivory Innovations’ network that includes interns, capital partners, and strategic planning. These winners of the second annual Ivory Prize competition were selected from 168 applicants – a nearly 25% increase from the inaugural year of the Prize.
In lieu of an in-person event, the announcement was held virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the announcement, the Ivory Innovations Advisory Board held a panel discussion on the latest housing topics, including COVID-19’s current and future impact on housing. A permanent copy of the livestream will be available here.
"The winners of the 2020 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability represent the most promising solutions to the nation’s affordable housing crisis,” said Clark Ivory, Member of the Ivory Innovations Board, President and Trustee of the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, and CEO of Ivory Homes. “These winners stand out among hundreds of applications submitted in the second year of the competition. From helping renters afford the upfront cost of apartments, to building single-family homes less expensively, and making it easier to build accessory dwelling units, our 2020 class is leading the way in housing affordability. These difficult times have shown that stable, affordable housing is more important now than ever, and these innovators have the tools, technology, and know-how to ensure Americans have access to a home they can afford.”
The 2020 Ivory Prize Winners:
Construction and Design — Modesto, California-based Entekra is implementing a fully integrated offsite building technique that streamlines its panelized building process from permitting to assembly, so that it can be completed in just a couple of days.
Finance — New York City-based Rhino works with landlords to eliminate costly security deposits and replace them with a small monthly insurance payment, helping users avoid cutting into their savings when they need to move.
Policy and Regulatory Reform — San Francisco-based Symbium is a computational law platform that mechanizes the rules and regulations of planning codes to help homeowners, design professionals, and planners quickly determine if an ADU is allowed on a property, what the development standards are, and processes needed to build these units.
The Public Sector Outstanding Achievement Award – 1000 Friends of Oregon and the Oregon Housing Allianceon behalf of the State of Oregon and its passage of the missing-middle housing bill HB 2001, and the City of Minneapolis for its comprehensive Minneapolis 2040 Plan.The Ivory Prize recognizes companies, non-profits, and government entities making measurable and scalable strides in housing affordability. The Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability strives to find and support the companies, governments, nonprofits, and advocacy groups that are making housing more attainable and affordable for Americans who are at or below area median income.
“In the first year the Ivory Prize received 126 nominations from 28 states,” said Kent Colton, who chairs the Ivory Innovations Advisory Board. “This year 168 nominations were received from 32 states. The significant increase shows both the magnitude of the housing affordability challenge as well as the innovation and creativity that is underway.”
The finalists and winners for the Ivory Prize are determined by Ivory Innovations’ Advisory Board, which is composed of some of the top minds in housing. These include Clark Ivory, President and Trustee of the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation and CEO of Ivory Homes, Utah’s largest homebuilder; Kent Colton, Chair of the Ivory Innovations’ Advisory Board and President of the Colton Housing Group; Carol Galante, Faculty Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California at Berkeley; Chris Herbert, Managing Director of Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies; Urban Institute Vice President and Co-director of its Housing Finance Policy Center,Laurie Goodman; Natalie Gochnour, Director of Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah; John McManus, VP-Editorial Director for Residential at Hanley Wood; and Ryan Smith, Director and Professor of the Washington State University School of Design and Construction.
The winners of the 2020 Ivory Prize were selected from the Top 10 finalists announced in February; the Top 25 were announced in January. Judging occurred at the headquarters of 2019 winner for Construction and Design, Factory_OS. The Terner Center at UC-Berkeley has a blog post about the competition and how the winners were selected.
For more information about the Ivory Prize and Ivory Innovations, check out this video or visit www.ivory-innovations.org.
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About Ivory Innovations: Ivory Innovations is an applied academic institution at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business dedicated to catalyzing high impact innovations in housing affordability. Ivory Innovations seeks to promote the most compelling ideas in housing affordability by working across sectors, providing monetary awards for groundbreaking innovations and leveraging its network and resources.
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