The Builder’s Daily
Grounded Solutions Network, a nonprofit known for its work in lasting housing affordability, is one of three 2025 Ivory Prize winners. Its Homes for the Future program — recognized in Ivory Innovations’ Finance category — offers a new approach to an old challenge: making homeownership affordable without relying on scarce public subsidies.
Ivory Innovations’ advisory board of jurists found that Grounded Solutions Network’s HFTF fund is innovative in leveraging a proven model for providing permanently affordable homeownership opportunities – the community land trust. The innovation lies in GSN’s partnership with a scaled single-family rental operator, which allows HFTF to purchase and rent scattered-site homes nationwide, leveraging private-sector efficiencies and economies of scale in these homes’ acquisition and rental operation. With its national network of local land trusts and shared equity nonprofits, GSN is exceptionally well-positioned to lead the fund.
For Devin Culbertson and his team, the answer is to harness the same infrastructure that powers institutional single-family rental (SFR) portfolios. Homes for the Future acquires rental homes in markets with strong economies and rising incomes, leases them with stable rents, and then transitions the properties into shared equity homeownership. The model pays the mortgage through rent, reducing the eventual sales price to below-market levels while retaining affordability for future buyers.
