Meet the people facing the brunt of Trump's budget cuts

For Lucia Rodriguez, misplaced car keys mean more than an unexpected cab ride or a missed party. Without her car, Rodriguez, her husband and their three children cannot make the weekly trip from their Nueces County, Texas, home and a well with a history of arsenic problems to a store to buy bottled water to drink. So for two agonizing days in February, the family carefully rationed one remaining gallon of bottled water as Rodriguez, 29, searched frantically for her keys.

"It's like we are living in a foreign country and we don't have the luxury of turning on a faucet," she said.

Now, Rodriguez and a local group advocating water improvements are pushing to connect the community to fresh surface water about 4 miles away, tapping a federal funding source called the Community Development Block Grant program.

But that source might run dry if President Donald Trump gets his way. His full budget proposal, expected to be released Tuesday, will zero out the program, which funds efforts like Meals on Wheels, homeless shelters for veterans, and in Rodriguez's case, water improvements for her rural community, which voted for Trump.

Trump, who wants to build a wall on the border with Mexico and increase military spending, has said that the grant program is "not well targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results."

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation who specializes in welfare and poverty, called the program a "model of inefficiency."

"The program is largely a slush fund for large urban cities," Rector said.

In the 43 years since the program started, it has helped many families. The New York Times explored its effect on the lives of four of them.

A life-changing water system

Nueces County, Texas

Lucia Rodriguez's husband, Ruben Gonzalez, who voted for Trump, says the federal grant program helped move the water his family uses in the right direction. Water distribution lines that were installed in 2016 laid the groundwork to bring fresh surface water to his street, and a separately funded filtration system installed in 2014 allowed the family to bathe in the well water.

Before the changes, "You would come out of the shower and smell like you had been in a public swimming pool," Ruben Gonzalez, 30, said.

Gonzalez also got a job installing his community's new water lines, paid for by the grant program. He credits the job with helping him lose 100 pounds and giving his family financial stability.

"I regret voting for him," Gonzalez said of the president. "Whenever you hear where he is actually trying to pull some of this money out of to contribute towards a wall, you think, 'Man, that's the last thing you should be thinking about.'"

A drug treatment program at risk

New Hampshire

In northern New Hampshire, along the Ammonoosuc River, people struggling with addiction work toward recovery in a 6-decade-old cottage that is not up to code. Friendship House, the only residential drug treatment center within 65 miles, is relying on money from the Community Development Block Grant program to complete a new building by October 2018 that meets code requirements so that the center can continue to provide services.

Kristy Letendre, the center's director, said Friendship House has been awarded an initial $500,000 in funds from the grant program to help construct the new building and add a detox center. But the group needs another $500,000 to complete construction and get the building licensed.

"This is immediately affecting us," Letendre said. "When you are looking at someone who is struggling with substance abuse, it's life or death for them."

Those seeking help at Friendship House included Kimberly Phillips, 33, who was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in third grade and at 12 began snorting her Ritalin and drinking her parents' alcohol.

"I didn't listen to my parents," she said. "I had behavioral issues. I acted without thought a lot of the time."

Friendship House's building is definitely lacking. When a staff member wanted to provide privacy at the front desk for intake clients, Phillips, who does chores as part of her recovery, cut and hung a shower curtain across the window.

Meetings, classes and group activities make for long weekdays at Friendship House. But the weekends can be the most challenging time for residents. Without structured programs, their minds often wander to drugs.

To pass the time, Phillips plays cards with men in the home, often beating them and talking smack. She shuffles like a pro. When she fans out the cards, she exposes track-mark scars on her arm.

Phillips has been trying to get sober for five years and has fought to keep from relapsing and overdosing. She recently completed a 28-day intensive program at Friendship House and is now in a 90-day lower intensity program there.

Addicts often face long waiting lists to get into such programs, and those lists might get even longer if the Community Development Block Grant is eliminated.

"I have goose bumps, and I get so emotional thinking about if we don't get this funding and the amount of people who are going to die," Phillips said.

Creating jobs and a lifeline

Peru, Indiana

In 2010, in the drawn-out aftermath of the Great Recession, Garry Goff laid off workers at his auto body shop, and three years later shut down his struggling business.

"I felt like I was lost and I felt like I was a loser," Goff, 53, said.

He landed a job as an airplane painter at Dean Baldwin Aircraft Painting, in part because of the Community Development Block Grant program. The Miami County Economic Development Authority had used $2 million in block grant funds to help pay for a $13.9 million renovation of an old hangar at Grissom Air Reserve Base, said Jim Tidd, the authority's executive director. The federal government had given the land to the county in 1994, but the property sat vacant for years until county officials persuaded Dean Baldwin to move in.

For Goff, a rehabilitated hangar proved to be a lifeline.

Haunted by the collapse of his business, Goff initially did not want to be a boss. But he has moved up to a supervisory position, increased his salary and oversees others who have benefited from having new jobs.

On his break, Goff went to his car and pulled out the lunch his wife, Patricia, packed for him in a soft-case Indianapolis Colts cooler. He sat in his car, the clouds reflecting off the windows, listening to music and calling Patricia Goff to catch up on how their days have been so far.

"This job virtually saved our lives," Patricia Goff said. "We were in a downward spiral and it really pulled us out of it."

"I don't think he gets how important some of these programs are," she continued, referring to Trump. "I understand there are some people who you feel like they are just sucking off the system and living off the system. But the people who are really suffering are your working poor."

Providing shelter for the homeless

Hollister, California

For weeks, Jennifer Coulter, 48, lived behind a Taco Bell in a dusty, dry homeless encampment where freight trains rumbled by and a man in the parking lot made art out of old tires.

A native of Hanford, California, who used to work as a home health aide, Coulter has been homeless for more than eight years and struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder after being raped at 18.

Coulter is terrified of living outdoors forever. "I've worked hard. I've gone to counseling. I do everything possible, you know?" she said. "And in the end, I'm still stuck out here. I don't want to die out here."

For now, San Benito County does not have a year-round homeless shelter, even though its homeless population has swelled, from 193 in 2011 to 651 in 2015.

But with $3 million from the Community Development Block Grant program, the county is planning to convert an old machine shop into a 50-bed permanent shelter that will also feature a service center to help residents and others escape homelessness, said James Rydingsword, director of the county's Health and Human Services Agency. The new shelter is set to open in November.

For now, Coulter survives by leaning on a community of other homeless people. Stopping at a riverbed she had once called home, Coulter ran into her friend Daniel Estrada. "I'm coming home," she told him.

Until the grant funding for the shelter comes through, Coulter will continue spending her days on the streets, occasionally taking refuge in a friend's garage and in her music. She often blares '60s rock.

On a recent day, she went into the garage of her friend Tom Tucker and turned up the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," singing along and tilting her head skyward: