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Habitat For Humanity Profits From Aspen Hotel Donations

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (CBS4) - This week between holidays brings some of the rich and famous to the slopes of Aspen, and as the high priced hotels try to keep up with current trends their remodels are helping out dozens of families in the Roaring Fork Valley.

Scott Gilbert is the president of Habitat for Humanity of the Roaring Fork Valley. He runs nearly as many Habitat ReStore outlets as there are on Colorado's Front Range.

Much of the donated furniture he sells is from some of the state's priciest hotels.

"Just from Snowmass Club alone, $2.1 million," Gilbert said.

Habitat for Humanity re-sells most of the furniture for around 10 cents on the appraised-dollar. But this year, five Aspen-hotels have donated furniture, injecting huge profits for the charity.

"$242,000 from the Hotel Jerome, $212,000 from the Snomass Club. ... that's a half million dollars of stuff we know we brought in from them," Gilbert said.

Gilbert said the profits enable them to "build up a pretty good war chest" for their homebuilding and land funds.

Habitat ReStore
Habitat ReStore (credit: CBS)

Before Gilbert took over, the chapter's budget was only about $25,000 and they were building about one home per year.

Now, with the help from hotel donations, they are buying home lots by the dozen.

"We have 20 in the bank, 20 that we own and five more being donated," Gilbert said. "So that will be about six, seven or eight years of building at our current rate of building, but we're going to increase our rate of building. Because we can now help more people."

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