Foreclosures Ravage Denver's Middle Class

Foreclosures Ravage Denver's Middle Class

Foreclosures are ripping through the rows of new homes in the flatlands where Denver turns to prairie. Every week, 10 more families here need to find someplace else to live.

Six months behind on their mortgage, Dave Evans and his wife, Suzie, packed the contents of their modest blue house here into a rented truck one day in July. The move came after weeks spent alternately crying and searching in a frenzy for somewhere to go. "At the end, it was so close we could have wound up on the streets," Dave Evans says.

For hundreds of homeowners in this mostly middle-class corner of Denver -- and an estimated 1.2 million more nationwide -- the wave of foreclosures battering U.S. financial markets is quickly unraveling the American dream. Those who have lost homes here describe seeing their lives crumble into anxiety and embarrassment. Many leave for cheap apartments or rooms with relatives, a trend that is tightening the market for affordable housing.

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