Thinking of tackling that long-overdue home improvement project? Even if you’d rather swing a hammer than swing the expense of hiring someone, what you throw away can go a long way to helping someone else build a new life.
Dale Douthat knows exactly where to start. As the local director of ReStore, Habitat for Humanity’s retail resale outlets, he oversees the three Louisville area shops that take in home improvement goods, giving 100 percent of the profits to building homes in the community.
“Habitat works with families who cannot afford to purchase a home any other way,” Douthat says. “The concept is that it’s better to give someone a hand up than a handout.” Even getting into the program is a seriously hands-on process: Successful applicants must meet financial criteria, then contribute 400 hours of “sweat equity” – working on other people’s homes, at the stores or in the office, depending on their physical ability – before they’re allowed to purchase their own abode. This hard work is rewarded with a zero-percent, 20-year mortgage designed to keep the new homeowners out of debt.
Financial trouble isn’t the only pitfall Habitat and ReStore hope to avoid. “About 30 percent of landfills is construction and remodeling debris,” Douthat explains. “All of these things are reusable, and we try to keep them in use and give the public a chance to buy them.” Very few of the donated materials – which run the gamut from tools to paint to furniture and appliances – wind up in the Habitat houses, which are built according to spec, with about 20 different floor plans available for families of various sizes and needs.
The materials, which must be in good working order and free of damage, come from all over. “It can be as simple as someone dropping off a box of nails, or as complicated as ‘I need some help pulling cabinets out of our house,’” Douthat says. “We can do all of that.”
Many donations find their way to ReStore by way of bigger operations. “We have a great relationship with a lot of builders and remodelers,” Douthat says. (Even though the vast majority of donated goods go up for resale, a notable coup for local Habitat homes was the hardwood flooring from the old Philip Morris factory.)
Habitat for Humanity is now the ninth largest home builder in Louisville, having completed 376 houses as of mid-July 2012. “We build about 25 (per year), and it’s growing every year,” Douthat says.
The three ReStore locations – 4044 Taylorsville Road at Hikes Point, 1631 Rowan Street in Portland, and 2777 S. Floyd St., across from Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium – are huge; the Hikes Point location alone boasts 17,000 square feet of retail space, not to mention an additional 9,000 square feet for storage and processing.
Staffed by as many as nine paid employees per store and some 50 volunteers among all three, the Restore provide a glimpse of infinity in both materials and personal possibilities – and yet they still have room to grow. Douthat – who lives in New Albany with his wife, Dawn, and their two dogs and two cats – keeps busy. “I think eventually we’ll have five or six stores, but it’ll be a few years,” he says. “We’ve tripled our floor space, but not the donations. Every cabinet, every sofa, every toilet we get makes a huge difference.”
For more information about ReStore’s mission, plus a full list of acceptable items for donation, visit www.louisvillerestore.org.
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