Student Competition Promotes Innovative Solutions to Housing Affordability

Housing affordability is an ongoing challenge that continues to impact the country. According to the latest data from the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI), housing affordability is at its lowest level since the Great Recession. Challenges such as lack of lots and labor and rising material costs persist to hamper affordability issues, but the home building industry continues to look for ways to help alleviate these issues.

One such example is the Ivory Innovations' upcoming “Hack-a-House” competition — a 24-hour live event to promote innovative and scalable solutions. The competition invites student teams to pitch a proposal based on a selected theme — homelessness, environmental challenges and construction technology, or sustainable renting and affordable homeownership — and encourages teams to “consider how their solution interacts with existing policy, finance and/or construction and design practices.”

Teams will receive a prompt on Sept. 30 at 12 p.m. MST to kick off the competition. Four monetary awards totaling $10,000 will be given to winning teams.

Individuals or teams can register by Sept. 29 to enter the competition. More details are available at ivory-innovations.org/hackahouse.