Michele Oberholtzer | People of Regrid

“We help people keep their homes.”

Tell us a little about you — we want to know more about the work you do.

I lead the tax foreclosure prevention team at UCHC Detroit, which serves thousands of households across Detroit and Wayne County each year to retain homeownership for those at risk of foreclosure. I’m also a writer and an entrepreneur. Most of my career has been in the environmental sector – with a focus on renewable energy, efficiency, clean air, and water in Detroit, New York City, and Durban, South Africa.

What got you into your field? We want to get a sense of your journey.

I became obsessed with tax foreclosure as an employee of Loveland back in 2014. It was just a short-term job that changed my life by exposing me to the homes and people directly affected by tax foreclosure. I founded The Tricycle Collective very soon after starting my work with Regrid and continued that work on a voluntary basis for about 2 years until UCHC hired me to lead their tax foreclosure, prevention team. I am still very driven to do this work!

You can read more about me, my work, my writings, my quest for better property ownership in Detroit on my website, a story on The Moth, and in Hamtramck Love Letter.

“Regrid has been a great help for us. Collecting data at the parcel level has helped us to target our work and increase our impact across a variety of different programs and engagements.”

We're sure you are able to help a lot of people through your work at UCHC. We want to learn more about it.

We help people keep ownership of their homes. We help people become the owner of the home they already live in. We help thousands of households each year and they often remain in their housing on a long-term and lifetime basis. The broader effect is more stabilized families, strengthened communities, generational wealth, and all the things that come with that.

How do you use Regrid?

We use Regrid to do door-to-door canvassing of residents of foreclosed homes to provide prevention and home-buying options.

Mail is fine, but there’s still nothing like a person-to-person conversation, Regrid helped us get from a massive list to a two-way interactive map that helps us get to people as efficiently as possible and keeps track of our Foreclosure prevention outreach. We also use the tool in our office to document home inspections and all repairs. We are always discovering other ways that it can be useful. Regrid is the tool we use to effectively gather and deliver information, it brings us to the homes of the people we serve, So we can help them keep those homes

Regrid as an organization has also been a great help for us. Collecting data at the parcel level has helped us to target our work and increase our impact across a variety of different programs and engagements. Every step of the way, the Regrid team has been there to support us. As we've increased our usage of the Regrid app, the Regrid team has added more features and data to help us be more effective and to make surveying more user-friendly for us and our partners.