I'm Nadia and for the last four years I, with the help of family and friends, have been renovating a 5,000 square foot building to open a traveler's hostel in South Haven, Michigan. This has been my dream since staying in hostels while working and traveling and not a day has passed since I was 20 years old, where I haven't been planning, designing, working towards, and renovating what I eventually named "Hostel SoHa".

Hostel SoHa is a type of shared lodging created to bridge the wealth-gap for visitors to our beautiful lakeshore town by offering a budget friendly, safe, overnight stay that is accessible to everyone. Every traveler, student, and young adult who stay are also united by their desire for the type of human connection that has all but been lost on our generation.

After 4 long years of work, one week before grand opening, our city's sewage system backed up and flooded our entire building with sewage through our floor drains. There were some areas in the building that were up to 6" deep when I discovered it and water was already pouring out the doors. Our building is now getting professionally treated for raw sewage damage including cutting off the bottom of every wall up to 24" to treat the wood on the inside. We also suffered a great loss of furniture, electronics, tools, and construction materials. As you can imagine, this is not only devastating but the worst possible time for a disaster. In South Haven, summer from June to August represents virtually every hospitality business's entire income for the year. And now, we may not have this much needed income to keep our business above water before even opening the doors.

We are hoping to still open this summer so we can survive but we need financial help with repairing our walls and replacing destroyed items. It remains to be seen if insurance or the City of South Haven will cover any of the damages, but even if they can, we would not get paid in any reasonable time to open during South Haven's tourism season and will likely not survive the winter without this income.

This is very low estimate of what it will cost to repair the damages and does not include our professional sewage treatment fees or our most expensive loss: loss of income. We would be forever grateful to everyone who can help support us so we have a chance. Thank you.