The Middle Class Confronts Poverty

The evidence that times are rough for many suburban middle class families is not merely anecdotal.

 For Dateline NBC’s upcoming special “America Now: Lost in Suburbia,” airing Sunday, June 24th at 8pm/7c, Boulder County's Department of Housing and Human Services provided the number of Louisville and Superior (Colorado) residents that relied on public safety nets to make ends meet. 

And while these affluent communities still boast some of the lowest poverty levels in Colorado, the statistics were nonetheless startling: since 2008 the combined number of families on Medicaid more than doubled, as did the number of people utilizing food assistance. Lafayette, another well-to-do suburb in East Boulder County experienced similar increases.