It's official. Higher-for-longer is no longer theoretical. It's real. The question and the bets now are not whether restrictive monetary and fiscal policy will continue for an extended runway but how much longer truly taming inflation will take.

The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence and instead indicate that it is likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence. Given the strength of the labor market and progress on inflation so far, it is appropriate to allow restrictive policy further time to work and let the data and the evolving outlook guide us." – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Bloomberg [gift link]

Other than for an upper-tier swath of American households, access to safe, decent, healthy, comfortable homes no longer comes with the turf of a typical day's take-home pay.

A new report from GOBankingRates used that framework (i.e. the popular 50-30-20 budget guideline) to analyze how much money a family of two adults and two children would need in each state to own a home, a car and a pet. The report tallied estimated annual essential expenses for such a family and then doubled that figure.

Using that framework, GoBankingRates found that all 50 states require more than a $100,000 annual income, according to the report, with 38 states needing more than $140,000." – CNBC

You see? "Upper-tier swath" is no exaggeration.

Those priced out of access to a place they gladly call home – or under greater strain of becoming so – are at risk of becoming a larger and larger "lower-tier" swath of working households for whom America has no clear array of solutions.

Unfortunately, what has happened is that wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living, by and large, for the last 50 years or so,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at Economic Policy Institute.

“It becomes increasingly hard for many families to be able to attain that sort of middle-class lifestyle, that American Dream,” Gould said. – CNBC

The good news is that some people haven't gotten the memo telling them to give up trying — more vigorously, creatively, brilliantly, and persuasively — to reverse housing's trend of making access harder rather than more attainable.

For six years running – from a time that will be remembered as the U.S. economy's "easy money" days to one that for at least an indefinite future will bear characteristics of fiscal constraint and costly capital – Ivory Innovations has scouted out and celebrated shining examples of that vigor, creativity, brilliance, and persuasion in housing policies, financial models, and building and design technologies.

This year's 10 finalists for honors and a generous financial award rose from a pool of more than 200 nominations, each telling a story of huge, clever, and committed initiatives to break through dysfunction, bend cost curves, and shape a future of expanded access to homes people love and thrive in.

This year's judges, by and large, saw trailblazers in local policy models, property ownership financial stacks, construction automation and building typology design A.I., and geospatial information matching most of which presupposed less-is-more when it came to a capital lift required to make the models go. Innovators this year zeroed in on specific solutions that could generate outsized, repeatable, scalable, and sustainable impact. Most of them came to life in lean operating conditions and stood up despite bootstraps beginnings and a highly local initial focus.

What surfaced is a cohort of 10 finalists for the 2024 Ivory Prize for Innovation in Housing Affordability, each of which demonstrates a proof case of solving its intended challenge – bending cost curves in the direction of a working household – in a real-world setting, has an operational runway to scale without running overweight with overheads or impatient capital investment or a policy change that may or may not come about. Further, each shows strong signs of being repeatable across different localities and jurisdictions and geographies and scalable to an expanding universe of users or beneficiaries in a widening range of income, race, and educational attainment populations.

Here are this year's 10 standout finalists for the Ivory Prize:

CONSTRUCTION AND DESIGN

In the Construction and Design category, this year’s finalists feature both daring technological solutions to tackle labor shortages and practical, replicable models that help speed the production of housing supply. These solutions ensure that labor shortages won’t halt necessary housing development and that buyers and renters have access to higher quality and, most importantly, affordable homes.

Automating Drywall Installation: Canvas | San Francisco, CA: Canvas is helping contractors build in bold new ways by putting better tools in the hands of skilled workers. 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 while realizing unmatched metrics for schedule, cost, quality and safety.

Streamlining Construction Labor & Interior Installs: Capsule | Anaheim, California: Capsule exists to bring a new streamlined construction workforce online. Their team of engineers, machines, and assembly technicians manufacture buildings as components to increase the number of units of housing available. In everything, Capsule does more with less.

Powering Microlearning with AI:  On3 | Madison, WI: On3 is an award-winning AI/Mobile Based Learning Application for field workers in construction, trade contractor, and manufacturing industries. On3 allows companies to seamlessly capture their critical work processes in video, create multilingual video-based learning modules, and transform their teams by using artificial intelligence (AI) to verify retention of critical knowledge among frontline personnel.

Scaling a Platform for Prefab Homes:  Villa | San Francisco, CA: Villa is a homebuilding platform that focuses on building prefab homes in “missing middle” infill locations. Villa uses an asset-light approach by partnering with factories to build homes based on Villa’s designs. With a focus on technology, modern design, quality construction, and affordability, Villa is creating a scalable solution that can meet the needs for more attainable housing production across America.

FINANCE

Each year, finalists in the Finance category find new ways to address systemic and financial barriers for renters and homebuyers. This year, these organizations have taken specialized approaches to financing increased housing supply, creating space for refugees and people in poverty, and providing opportunities for the next generation of homebuyers.

Opening the Door to Homeownership:  Foyer | New York, NY: Foyer is designed to be the entryway to homeownership for the next generation of first-time homebuyers, providing confidence at a time when homeownership has never been more difficult. Foyer offers members personalized financial planning together with a tax-advantaged First Time Homebuyer Savings Account aimed at helping them reach their homeownership goals faster and more responsibly.

Unlocking Rental Supply for Refugees:  HIAS: Housing Guarantee Fund | Silver Spring, MD: 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. By providing financial backstopping for refugees’ first leases in the U.S., the HGF reduces risk to housing providers and increases housing access, affordability, and stability for recently arrived refugees.

Improving Access to High Opportunity Neighborhoods: HON Partners | Dallas, TX: High Opportunity Neighborhood Partners is a full-service real estate company that acquires quality homes in High Opportunity Neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods where a child born into a low-income family has a greater chance to close the wealth and income gap. They provide these homes along with supportive services (Services Enriched Housing) exclusively to Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher holders in order to break the cycle of poverty.

Activating Public-Funded Social Housing: Montgomery County Housing Production Fund | Kensington, MD: The Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) of Montgomery County, Maryland partnered with Montgomery County to create the Housing Production Fund (HPF) in 2021. The HPF is now expected to produce as many as 2,000 new housing units in the county by the end of the decade, of which at least 30% will be affordable. The Housing Production Fund (HPF) is a $100 million revolving fund that provides low-cost construction financing for the development of publicly owned, mixed-income housing. Jurisdictions across the country are now exploring how they can adapt this model as explored in recent stories in Vox and the New York Times.

PUBLIC POLICY AND REGULATORY REFORM

Finalists in the Public Policy and Regulatory Reform category include both government-led and nonprofit solutions and range from local to national in scale. The current and potential impact of these organizations on new ways of approaching housing density, supporting wealth creation for renters, and scaling the deployment of local reparations programs is vast. Each provides a catalytic model for other organizations around the country to learn from in their own housing affordability initiatives.

Crafting the Next Generation of ADU Incentives:  City of San Diego: ADU Bonus Program | San Diego, CA: The City of San Diego has implemented an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Bonus Program that offers increased density for Affordable ADUs. This incentive has led to the construction of deed-restricted and naturally affordable ADUs throughout the city.

Supporting Wealth Creation for Families of Color:  Compass Working Capital | Boston, MA: 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. Since 2010, Compass has developed and implemented a series of innovations to expand the scope and impact of the Family Self-Sufficiency program, the nation’s largest wealth-building program for families with low incomes, made available in HUD-assisted housing.

Informing & Empowering Localized Reparations:  FirstRepair | Evanston, IL: FirstRepair has taken a local-to-national approach in the centuries-long movement for Black reparations. Localities nationwide, like Evanston, IL, are prioritizing housing-related redress as a first tangible step to repair the legacies of slavery in the United States.

The Ivory Prize winners will be announced on May 16th. In October 2024, a summit will gather leadership from all 10 finalists to speak at Harvard University.