them keep their homes. During the most recent auction, The Tricycle Collective was able to help 10 families by giving them $500 each to place a starting bid. Oberholtzer launched an Indiegogo campaign that eventually exceeded its goal and raised just under $6,500.
The Tricycle Collective came together quickly—Oberholtzer didn’t even buy her website’s domain name until Sept. 13—but she’s so pleased with the initial results, she wants to mount a more formal fundraising campaign to help more families buy their homes during the 2015 auction.
Still, it wasn’t a perfect first try. Of the 10 properties originally identified by Oberholtzer in this year’s auction, three of them were lost to a higher bidder. Oberholtzer worked with the nonprofit United Community Housing Coalition, which handled the bidding process, and pledged to help those who weren’t successful bidders find new housing.
“I tried to have reasonable expectations, but I was surprised by how high the bidding went on some of the houses,” Oberholtzer adds. “One lesson learned is not to get ahead of ourselves—a lot of the properties sold for higher than the minimum bid. Detroit is on the radar of investors, so it was more competitive than I thought.”
One way Oberholtzer thinks she can help families keep their homes in the future is by making sure they know how to track their properties online using Loveland’s data. A lot of people who have the greatest need to see housing data aren’t exposed to it, she says. The auction itself is also online, she points out. “I said to a resident that the auction was on the Internet. He said, ‘Ok, I think my neighbor has one of those.’ It devastated me to know he had no real way to participate.”
Keeping people in their homes is also good for the city, Oberholtzer says. It maintains continuity and secures tenants with a vested interest in the property. “I think a lot can be done in terms of foreclosure prevention,” she adds. “One big way is to give renters the first option to buy. What happens now is renters are completely out of the conversation. The most important thing I provided was information, not money.”
