Last year, the shelter served about 150 women and children.

The Lotus shelter is located in the former St. John’s Lutheran Church outside Vincent. Next to the church is a house that was home to the church’s pastors over the years.

Now, the house will be home for up to five Lotus women at a time. The women will start at the shelter and sort of “graduate” up to the transitional house, Lotus Executive Director Ashley Vaala explained.

“The criteria to come over here is employed and single,” she added.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Richard Higgins, of Fort Dodge, donated this wicker bedroom set for one of the rooms in the Lotus Community Project’s transitional house for single, working women.

While the shelter itself takes in mothers and their children, this transitional house will not. Vaala said in the future she hopes to build transitional housing apartments for Lotus women who do have children who live with them.

“People do come to us with jobs,” Vaala said. “It happens often. But that job isn’t cutting it, or something big happened and even though they’re still working, they’re homeless.”

There are five bedrooms in the house. Each room has a keypad door lock so the women can set a code to unlock their door.

The residents of the transitional house will be expected to pay something to live there, but that number will be different from person to person, depending on income and other financial responsibility, Vaala said.

There probably won’t be a hard-and-fast rule on how long someone can stay in the house, Vaala said. At the shelter, guests are told they can stay up to three months, but depending on their situations, they can receive extensions if they show they are working on their goals and making progress.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Philip Moll, who spent much of his childhood living in the house next to the former St. John’s Lutheran Church outside Vincent, donated $5,000 toward the house’s recent renovation into transitional housing for single, working women living in the Lotus Community Project emergency shelter. The shelter is located in the former church.

“I would say a year is a good amount of time for people to most likely get on their feet, but we’ll look at each case individually and what’s best for them,” she said.

For the first half of 2020, the Lotus Community Project worked hard with the help of many community volunteers to renovate the old house.

The house got all new flooring, with the exception of the kitchen. Vaala said that while the kitchen floor was “retro and outdated,” it was still in pretty good shape, so they decided to leave it as is.

For the rest of the house, volunteers from Valero Renewables and Elanco ripped up old carpeting and padding. Carpet World Flooring America sold the new carpets to Lotus at cost, and even installed the flooring for free.

Valero and Elanco also painted the rooms and helped put up a couple of walls. Prairie Lakes Church helped move furniture into the two-story home.

-Messenger photo by Kelby Wingert
Jaime Daniels and Ashley Vaala, executive director of the Lotus Community Project, relax in the living room of the shelter’s new transitional house for single, working women. The house is located next to the shelter and gives the guests another step toward independence.

“The Vincent Fire Department all pitched in and bought us a new fridge,” Vaala said. “And our board member Jane E. Morgan bought us a new stove.”

Richard Higgins, of Fort Dodge, donated a full wicker bedroom set for use in one of the bedrooms.

The Lotus Project also received a special gift from a former resident of the house.

Philip Moll spent much of his childhood living in the home while his father was pastor at the church from 1956 to 1967. Moll’s mother, Thelma, spent much of her time in the kitchen, he said. It was her favorite room in the house.

In honor of his mother, Moll donated $6,000 toward the renovations. That gift is commemorated with a small plaque on the kitchen wall.

At the end of 2020, Vaala saw another vision she had for the Lotus Project come to fruition.

Lotus Treasures, a thrift shop, opened at 620 Second St. in Webster City in December.

Vaala and Ashley Bishop have been working diligently to get boxes of donations unpacked and displayed. The store offers shoppers furniture, home decor, clothing, shoes, outerwear and accessories.

Many of the items are gently used, donated by community members. But other pieces are brand new.

“We had a boutique donate all of this new clothing,” Vaala said, pointing to a wall of women’s tops and dresses. “We’ve got so many cute things.”

Proceeds from the shop benefit the homeless shelter and transitional living home.

Vaala said she learned about the lack of resources for homeless women in north central Iowa when she worked for different community service agencies in the area. In 2017, she decided there needed to be a homeless shelter that would serve women and children. She took some time off work and started job shadowing at other Iowa shelters.

By April 2017, she quit her full-time job at the Berryhil l Center to begin the women’s shelter project. A board of directors was formed and all of the paperwork to create a 501(c)3 designation was filed with the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.

Nearly $200,000 was raised to get the project rolling in 2018 and the shelter opened in January 2019.

The idea for the thrift store came as Vaala was shadowing at the Beacon of Hope shelter in Fort Dodge.

“They put a lot of effort into that store and keeping it up in the community,” she said. “It made sense for us to do that here.”

Initially, Vaala said she hoped to find a store in Eagle Grove, but was unable to find a suitable building.

“We looked here in Webster City and quickly found a store,” she said. “This is really the perfect location for us. We can rent and not have to worry about buying, especially during 2020.”

Donations can be made at the shelter, where they are processed for the store. She said that any clothing items donated must be free of stains and holes. Donations of furniture, home decor and other items are also welcome.