Ever worry about property values when new affordable housing comes to your neighborhood? Meet the HUD Sweat and Tears team from the University of Utah!
In this episode of Ten Minute Talks, we sit down with the winners of the Ivory Innovations 2025 Hackathon competition. Their innovative solution, the Hometown Stability and Improvement Program, tackles NIMBYism head-on.
Discover how their plan ties zoning reform to community stability, offering homeowners protection against potential property value loss while incentivizing affordable housing development. Learn how this unique TIF program aims to ease anxieties and foster community investment.
#AffordableHousing #HousingInnovation #UrbanPlanning #PropertyValue
In this episode of Ten Minute Talks, we sit down with the winners of the Ivory Innovations 2025 Hackathon competition. Their innovative solution, the Hometown Stability and Improvement Program, tackles NIMBYism head-on.
Discover how their plan ties zoning reform to community stability, offering homeowners protection against potential property value loss while incentivizing affordable housing development. Learn how this unique TIF program aims to ease anxieties and foster community investment.
#AffordableHousing #HousingInnovation #UrbanPlanning #PropertyValue
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NewsTranscript
00:00I'm Allison LaForgia, Managing Editor of HousingWire's Content Studio, and today I am recording a very special 10-minute talks with an extremely talented group of people.
00:11I am with the HUD Sweat and Tears team from the University of Utah, and they are the winner of the Policy and Regulatory Reform Prompt from the Ivory Innovations 2025 Hackathon competition.
00:23First, let me say congratulations to you guys on winning the Regulatory and Policy Prompt.
00:30I would love if we could start with some introductions and talk to me about what inspired you guys to come together as a team and join the competition.
00:39I can hop in. So I'm Julia. I'm studying city metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, and our whole team is interns at Ivory Innovations.
00:50So we've been thinking about this Hackathon House competition for quite a while.
00:55It's a part-time internship, so we definitely spend a few hours a week thinking about housing affordability and innovation in particular.
01:02And then, just like to mention, our teammates Arden and McKay, who aren't on the call, but I'll send it to Elsa to introduce herself.
01:09Yeah, I am also studying urban planning at the University of Utah.
01:15So, yeah, I'm also an intern at Ivory Innovations.
01:18It's a little bit of a different kind of scope, housing and urban planning, but they are very much like intertwined, just like urban planning is with everything.
01:27And I can wrap it up. My name is Madison, and I'm also at the University of Utah getting my master's in public administration and a certificate in urban planning.
01:39I've been lucky enough to work with Elsa, Julia, McKay, and Arden as policy interns.
01:46And when it came around to, you know, getting ready for Hackathon House, we just kind of looked at one another.
01:53We're like, why don't we just make a team? Like, we've already been kind of studying and working on this already.
01:58And, yeah, we're really happy it worked out, and it was a lot of fun working with each other again.
02:04Sounds like you guys almost had, like, a competitive advantage coming into this.
02:09It's so great that you guys not only are involved with Ivory Innovations from an internship level, but that you guys were also like,
02:16hey, why don't we actually join the competition this year?
02:20So let's start with your idea, which was based around the idea of creating a safety net over a neighborhood's property values to encourage more affordable housing.
02:30So walk me through your solution and tell me how you guys came up with it.
02:38I could do that. And then if you guys want to jump in at any point, please feel free.
02:43So our solution, we propose the Hometown Stability and Improvement Program.
02:48That was our lovely name for it.
02:50And like you mentioned, so it is a statewide initiative that ties zoning reform to community stability.
02:57So under this statewide reform, it requires municipalities to adopt upzoning and form-based codes within 18 months to be eligible for a split tax increment financing program or a TIF program.
03:12And then the way that that TIF structure would work is 65% of the funds would go towards a community investment fund,
03:19which would help finance developer incentives, infrastructure upgrades, and local amenities.
03:26And then 35% would go towards a value preservation fund, which would provide homeowners with protection against up to 20% of potential property value loss.
03:38And part of the reason why we did that is because we really wanted to try to find a solution to combat kind of like NIMBY attitudes and perspectives.
03:51And we know that one of the many, I guess, concerns that they have is how will all this new development impact their property value.
04:02And so by having this value preservation fund where they have this protection can help like calm some of that concern and that anxiety that maybe they'll experience some property loss.
04:12Um, although one thing that we will say is we are fully aware that there's like 50 years worth of research, um, into like this attitude that property values do decrease.
04:25And it actually shows that your property values increase after you put in more development.
04:30But the idea of having this fund is to help ease the anxiety experienced by these homeowners.
04:35And then after 10 years, the remaining, any unused funds would then flow back into that community investment fund, which would then go towards like the infrastructure and just like community needs for all of these municipalities.
04:49So that's like the, the basic summary, but Elsa, Julia, do you guys have anything else you want to add to that?
04:56Um, I'll just add a little bit and how we came up with the idea.
04:58Um, for another class of mine, we're doing a project in a small town in Utah, um, in Heber city.
05:04And I was talking to a local stakeholder there and up in that area.
05:09Um, there was this recent affordable housing development and I was asking her what she thought about it because I was excited about it.
05:15And she kind of just goes into these complaints about her sister lives there and she's worried that housing, that her home value is going to go down.
05:22And this was about two days before the competition.
05:25So the conversation was fresh in my mind and that whole conversation, I was just a little frustrated with this community member because she's someone who's in the urban planning world.
05:33And she, even in that world, she still has these kinds of concerns that really aren't like the most valid when it actually comes to what happens like in the market.
05:44So then when we first read the prompt, which was specifically how can a housing policy, um, increase development in high cost neighborhoods, it really brought me back to that conversation and thinking about how we could improve the concerns of residents like this person I was talking to.
06:02Yeah, I mean, I think it's a, it's a really interesting idea because I think it's the loudest complaint that people probably have from like a planning perspective, right?
06:13People are, usually I feel like this is one of those concerns that is unfortunate that it comes up, especially when you're in a situation where you're like, you know, as a stakeholder that this is so important for this area.
06:27And this is such an important issue and you still sort of see people occasionally raising these complaints and it's hard to sort of myth bust them, right?
06:37So it's really interesting that you guys came up with a solution that addresses this directly.
06:42Madison, I see you, I see you nodding with me.
06:44I'll let you jump in.
06:46I was like, I was just getting excited, but yeah, no, exactly.
06:51That was really our idea.
06:52I think Julia was really clever when we were brainstorming in like, in this itty-bitty room on campus during the competition.
07:01She was like, we need to find a way, like, how can we like, not necessarily sneakily, but like, how can we sneak in density, but also like kind of address this like concern of like the fear, I guess, of having density.
07:14Um, and so that was like, that really was the foundation for like our brainstorming was like, how can we do this, but also use it as kind of like an educational tool too, where you're like still being able, being able to push things forward while also, um, being able to hopefully like lay a foundation where like people can understand like, wait, okay.
07:38Like I shouldn't be afraid of density and this is why, or like, you know, um, housing is expensive.
07:47Like how can we help kind of teach to where they are to hopefully help build a foundation so we can do more in the future.
07:55And so that was kind of like our thoughts with that.
07:59So absolutely.
08:00I think education is going to be key to any solution that we have moving forward.
08:06And I like that.
08:07This is what I think is sort of interesting about your concept and maybe I'm extrapolating here.
08:13So correct me if you're wrong.
08:14Would the idea be that this is available on a national scale?
08:18So eventually you're sort of teaching different municipalities and state governments to say, Hey, if we reward this, we're sort of addressing that.
08:27Sort of persistent feedback that you hear from people, especially in what would traditionally be labeled as maybe higher income areas that need, that are looking to meet their affordable housing quota.
08:42I know that like one of the things that like in order to like be competitive in the, um, hack house competition, you do need to make sure that your solution is scalable.
08:54So that is something that we had talked about, honestly, like the whole day we were working on this was like, well, like, can we actually, is this adoptable?
09:03Is this too space specific or place specific?
09:05I should say.
09:07Um, and ideally, like we initially thought, cause like in your proposal, you could honestly offer a national policy solution or you can do state like local, whatever it is, as long as it is like scalable.
09:22One thing that we were thinking about is like, it could honestly be scalable to the point that it could be national legislation, but we thought it would almost be more impactful to go from like the state perspective and give the municipalities more flexibility and how they're adopting the upzoning and the form-based codes and how they're using that community investment fund.
09:44Um, so it's like best suited to the needs of those areas.
09:50Um, and so then ideally it's like, you could always have like national legislation to encourage other states to adopt it, but we thought that it would be more like more efficient in the hands of those who are like directly engaging with those populations.
10:06Yeah, that, that's such a, that's a really interesting point.
10:10So I'm going to follow that up with asking if there's anything that you guys were thinking about when you guys were actually coming up with a pitch that sort of surprised you based off of maybe other existing solutions that don't exist or what, how this is different from existing solutions that are currently in this space.
10:33Cause I think it's worth noting to the audience, how interesting of a concept this is for people who maybe aren't as familiar.
10:41Yeah.
10:41I feel like in like the sphere of like the problems in the housing form of the crisis, nimbyism is definitely one of the top concerns, but I wouldn't say I've seen like a lot of policies that really address it like at all.
10:56I feel like it's one of those hard, like social issues that maybe just can kind of get looked over.
11:04Um, so honestly, I really don't know of any other, like this specifically like geared toward nimbyism because it is a relatively like new concept.
11:13I think a lot of the existing solutions kind of focus on the, the, what actually happens.
11:18Like there are upzoning policies that already exist, but a lot of them just focus on like the facts of this is like what density can do for a community instead of, you know, focusing on nimbyism really.
11:29Like there's not a number of facts you can throw at them for them to be like, yeah, okay, that's fine with the density.
11:36I don't know.
11:37A lot of them focus on just the straight facts of we need more density and we don't care what you think about it instead of just being like, Hey, we understand your concerns and we're going to actually focus on you.
11:45And this is how we're going to, we're going to benefit you specifically, not just the people who are moving in.
11:50Um, and yeah, focusing on more of that social aspect.
11:53I love where you went with that because I think the idea of getting the community to embrace it is a different standpoint where you're.
12:03Almost sort of setting up like a case study for it to be successful in other areas.
12:08So you're sort of retraining on like a municipality by municipality level that this is in like a positive way without just bulldozing your solution through, which I think is really interesting.
12:23And I think also gives you, when you have buy-in from a local community, I think that really changes not only the community's perspective of the solution, but also how they embrace the people who eventually live in those areas.
12:37And one thing too, that I honestly didn't really think about until a little bit, like a couple of days after the competition, I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, there was like not one moment when we were considering our solutions where we kind of got caught up in like, maybe like the partisan politics side of, um, housing and what that looks like.
13:00Um, and I think right now, like one of the things that I really liked about our solution is the fact that we're trying to build bridges and not further, like offer more, like maybe, I don't necessarily want to say divisive solutions, but maybe once that immediately you hear about it and you're not interested in learning more about it.
13:24Right. And, um, and, um, and I thought that was something that was really cool.
13:29What I think is really interesting is you guys are coming to the table with something you're, you're, I think there's wins for people who stand on both sides of the issue here, right?
13:38You're meeting the concerns of existing communities and you're also meeting the needs of an underserved group.
13:47So it's kind of, it's not often that you have something where you can make both sides.
13:51Exactly. Yes. And I think that like with that too, it's like, these issues are going to affect you regardless of like your political standing or, uh, even like, um, like anchor bracket, like these are, these are issues that we're all facing.
14:07So we wanted to make sure that our solution was kind of like all encompassing in that sense.
14:13So you guys are the next phase of the competition is right around the corner.
14:19So talk to me, talk to me about what's next. Talk to me about how you guys are preparing for the next portion.
14:26Um, yeah. So in about two weeks, I think is the ivory housing summit where we will present our pitch and then the two other teams.
14:35So the finance winner and the construction winner will also present their pitch.
14:39And then right after that, there's an online voting portal that anyone, cause it'll be a virtual summit or there's an in-person option, but it was all recorded and all posted.
14:49Um, and then it's a public vote, um, on who will be that like final grand prize winner.
14:55Um, so yeah, we've been working together to try to improve.
14:58There's, it's such like a big policy we came up with that there's definitely like a few, like, I think the feasibility is probably like our biggest issue just cause it's such like a large thing.
15:07So we've just kind of been trying to like work through those smaller details, talking a lot about like how something like this could actually be passed, like in the rural world beyond just like an idea.
15:17Yeah. Yeah. So there's been a lot of devil's advocates being played around because we're kind of trying to anticipate what any of the judges or voters might think of as holes in our, in our policy and be like, actually, how can we fill those holes in as nicely as we can?
15:32Cause like, I think we have a really good overarching concept and there's like, obviously you don't just have 24 hours to create any other normal policy.
15:39And so we're just trying to kind of patch in all of the little holes that we can. So we have like the most solid, uh, feasible, like perfect policy that we can.
15:48We're just trying to iron it out, get it as good as we can. And honestly, we're just looking forward to it. I think we were all really excited.
15:55We started out just like happy to be there and then we kind of got really competitive as the day progressed.
16:04And so we're really to see it through the, I guess the, the final lap.
16:10Well, congratulations again on winning the policy and regulatory prompt.
16:15And I wish y'all the best of luck in the next portion of the competition.
16:22And to our audience, if you want any links to any of the things that were mentioned in today's conversation, we'll have them under this episode and we'll see you again soon. Thanks.
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