Telluride Foundation: Finalist for Prize for Housing Affordability!

17 Mar Telluride Foundation: Finalist for Prize for Housing Affordability!

The Telluride Foundation‘s rural housing initiative is recognized as an innovative solution for solving America’s housing crises.

Click HERE to make a donation to the Telluride Foundation’s Covid-19 Response Fund or contact Katie Singer at (970) 729-1807 orkatie@telluridefoundation.org.

The Telluride Foundation’s housing initiative, “Rural Homes: For Sale, For Locals,” was recently recognized by the University of Utah’s School of Business as a finalist for the 2021 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability.

The Ivory Prize is an annual award recognizing ambitious, feasible, and scalable solutions across the nation to housing affordability. The Foundation’s initiative addresses the challenge of building new homes in rural Colorado.

New construction costs in rural areas can be 40%+ higher than completed appraised values due to inflated labor costs, lower rents, the inability to compete for tax credits, and the lack of capacity in planning, development, and property management. The Foundation’s initiative consolidates a suite of strategies to reduce the price for which homes can be built and sold.

“Rural Homes: For Sale, For Locals” meets the challenges of building in rural Colorado by attacking the primary costs of housing: capital, land, and home building. By integrating donated land, prefabricated panelized home design, and low-cost construction finance into a toolkit, the Foundation is restructuring the way rural homes can be financed affordably for our region’s essential workforce.

That approach was recognized by Ivory Innovations, an institute at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, as a Top 25 Finalist for the 2021 Ivory Prize for Housing Affordability.

The Foundation’s initiative was selected from 160 nominations from 39 states.  According to Abby Ivory, Director of Ivory Innovation and Strategic Projects at the David Eccles School of Business, “The 2021 class of our Top 25 are pioneering new approaches, breaking down historic barriers and focusing on solutions that address multiple and complex problems through the lens of housing affordability.”

For more information on the 2021 Ivory Innovations and other Top 25 Finalists, go to: https://ivory-innovations.org/upcoming-events-updates/2021/2/5/mar-1st-2021-2021-ivory-prize-top-25-press-release.

The Telluride Foundation and its housing initiative partners are incredibly grateful for the recognition and the opportunity to connect with the network of impressive finalists working to address housing affordability nationally. To read more about the Rural Homes: For Sale, For Locals project, go to https://ruralhomesproject.co/. You can follow the journey of this initiative by subscribing for regular updates from that website.

Telluride Foundation, more:

The Telluride Foundation exists to create a stronger Telluride and regional community through the promotion and support of philanthropy. 2021 marks 20 years of making more possible through the Telluride Foundation’s commitment to enrich the quality of life of the residents, visitors, and workforce of the Telluride region.

The Telluride Foundation is a nonprofit, apolitical community foundation that makes grants to nonprofits, owns and operates programs that meet emerging and unmet community needs, and makes investments.

The Foundation approaches this work through the lens of its core values of inclusion, self-reliance, and innovation. Its work is funded through the generous support of individual donors as well as grants from state and national foundations.

The Foundation hopes the community will join it in celebrating its 20th anniversary as it honors the nonprofits, donors, and community members who have all partnered together to achieve a significant positive impact on the region.

For more information click on www.telluridefoundation.org