First-of-its-Kind Platform Selected as Best Solution to Solving America’s Housing Affordability Crisis
Boston – May 18, 2021: Framework Homeownership’s Keep by Framework™ — the first independent digital platform to support long-term homeownership success with unbiased content, tools, and resources — has been announced as the winner in the finance innovation category for the 2021 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. The Ivory Prize, now in its third year, is an annual award recognizing ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions to housing affordability nationally across three distinct categories: Finance; construction and design; and public policy and regulatory reform.
“We are so grateful to have our work to democratize homeownership recognized by Ivory Innovations with the Ivory Prize in the finance category,” said Danielle Samalin, CEO of Framework. “Since 2012, we’ve proudly served over 1.1 million customers with our Framework Homebuyer Education Course. To continue to expand our offerings, we developed Keep to connect homeowners to the resources and opportunities that they need to maintain their home for the long term. Keep increases homeownership sustainability and the Ivory Prize will allow us to help even more people achieve successful homeownership.”
Keep, available in app stores and at keephome.com, provides self-paced courses, tools, resources, and expert advice to help homeowners navigate the process, stress, time pressure, and unexpected events in buying and owning a home. The experience is designed with a human-centered approach to helping homeowners feel informed, supported, calm, and confident in their decision-making. Since its launch in March of 2020, Keep has had more than 24,000 users, who have engaged with more than 42,000 lessons. Keep has also played a pivotal role in providing updated, timely information to help consumers address critical information gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which have the potential to financially devastate vulnerable homeowners.
This year’s winners, selected from 160 nominations in 39 states and announced via livestream, feature innovative solutions ranging from new approaches to address ever-rising material and labor costs, to efforts that helped communities and individuals respond to COVID-19. An additional focus was placed on solutions to affordability that seek to address historic inequalities related to race and housing.
More than $200,000 in prize monies will be distributed between the winners selected from the three award categories — construction and design (including both new construction and rehabilitation); public policy and regulatory reform; and finance.
“When we started the Ivory Prize three years ago, we already had a housing affordability crisis,” said Clark Ivory, founder of the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability and CEO of Ivory Homes. “The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified that crisis. We are thrilled to recognize four amazing innovators that are providing unique and impactful contributions to solving our nation’s affordability challenges.”
This year, Ivory Innovations is partnering with the Housing Lab at the Terner Center at the University of California, Berkeley to send a top entrant through the program.
About Framework: Framework® is a social enterprise founded on the simple belief that homeownership, one of the most reliable ways to build long-term wealth and financial security, should be accessible to everyone. The Framework mission is to democratize the homeownership process, particularly for first-time, first-generation homebuyers and homeowners with low-moderate incomes and people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Framework recognizes the systemic inequities in the housing system and uses equitable research practices to design inclusive technology products and services that increase access and help people make informed and confident decisions at every step of their homeownership journey. To learn more, visit www.frameworkhomeownership.org.
About Ivory Innovations: Ivory Innovations is an applied academic institution and operating foundation dedicated to catalyzing high-impact innovations in housing affordability. Utilizing its network and resources, Ivory Innovations promotes the most compelling ideas in housing affordability working across sectors, providing monetary awards with the Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability. Additionally, in partnership with the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, Ivory Innovations places students at the center of its efforts, including Hack-A-House — an annual entrepreneurial competition, scholarships, internships, and a course on Innovations in Housing — where students explore innovations with potential to improve housing affordability, support the Ivory Prize nominating process and engage with the national advisory board. For more information about the Ivory Prize and Ivory Innovations visit www.ivory-innovations.org.