Joyce Winder brought her last baby home to the light blue house on Henry Street.
She raised her children there and spent nearly 40 years in the neat, single story house with her husband before he died.
It holds a lot of memories, but no matter how much she loves it, Winder couldn't afford more than $10,000 in repairs needed to fix the roof and weatherize the rooms.
South Central Missouri Community Action Agency, with the help of federal grant money, stepped up.
The repairs were finished by January, a relief for the 69-year-old who lives on a fixed income after working for years as a telephone operator, factory employee and finally as kitchen staff at Cedar Gate Nursing Home.
The programs that helped Winder are among $54 billion in non-defense program reductions proposed under President Donald Trump's first budget draft, released in March. While none of the proposed cuts have been finalized and there will be more work done by Congress, the "skinny" budget establishes the president's priorities.
The cuts represent at least $1 million in annual funding to the local Boys and Girls Club, AmeriCorps and RSVP programs, as well as SCMCAA. Programs that have provided well over $2 million in project-specific grant funding to the local area in the past five years would also be eliminated. (See accompanying story for list of local cuts.)
"This (was) the first step in a five-month process that's going to determine the amount of funding allocated to each federal agency and program," said Chris Rushin, Boys and Girls Club executive director. "If anything else, this is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our value to the community and show our incredible return on investment."
Boys and Girls Clubs help prepare young people for college and career, while developing good character, Rushin said.
"Our Boys and Girls Club parents are more productive, miss work less often and our kids make better grades and they make healthy lifestyle choices. This is where it saves taxpayer money," Rushin said.
The Boys and Girls Club nationally wants to approach the proposed cuts in a non-political, non-partisan way.
It's a strategy being employed by many of the groups which could be impacted.
The affect to communities like those from Shannon to Butler counties, some of the poorest in the state, would be significant, said Todd Richardson of SCMCAA, who shares the name as state representative Todd Richardson, but is not an elected official.
Weatherization and other community action money represents crisis funding, he said. It offers a little help to people like Winder at critical times.
Winder's finances were already stretched to recover from 2008 flood damage. She is still paying on a loan she and her husband took out after water came in through their home's back door and exited out the front door, leaving behind mud, mold and disaster.
The house had to be gutted, said Winder, the second longest resident on her section of Henry Street.
There is a misconception that some assistance programs provide too much help, said Richardson.
"We have proven at community action in Missouri and nationwide that most people don't utilize our programs all the time," he said.
Less than 10 percent of those who have received energy crisis intervention money are regular users, he explained.
"In a perfect world, the best option would be that everyone is so careful, so safe, that preventative medication and health care eliminated the need for emergency rooms. We all know that doesn't exist. People have accidents. People have heart attacks." Richardson said.
"Why would we think economically that's not the same case?" he continued. "People can do a lot of things right and then find themselves in the position where they need help."
Removing safety net programs will widen the chasm for those who are struggling, until they can't cross it at those critical times, he believes.
"You have to have a balanced approach, a comprehensive approach to helping people, helping communities improve," Richardson said. "You can't assume a one-size-fits-all and you can't assume that everyone has the ability to do the same thing."
Funding for programs like the Delta Regional Authority or Community Development Block Grants help communities pay for needed projects they could otherwise not have afforded, others say.
"The DRA funding is crucial to our small communities because they are permitted to utilize it as required matching dollars for larger federally-funded projects," said Felicity Ray, executive director of the Ozark Foothills Regional Planning Commission. "Without it, for example, the Poplar Bluff Industrial Park bypass, which included $635,000 in DRA funding, would not have happened."
Butler County was awarded nearly $1.4 million in CDBG money in 2016 alone for a Pepsi Mid America project that created 10 jobs, a new nutrition center building in Qulin and flood buyout and study in Poplar Bluff.