The impact of the recession has been acute on families like the Millers (right) and the Freemans (center and left).  (Hector Emanuel/Whitney Curtis)

Last year the bank tried to repossess the Freemans’ home  even though they were only three months in arrears. Their son, Andy, was recently knocked off his mother’s health insurance and only painfully reinstated for a large fee. And, much like the boarded-up houses that signal America’s epidemic of foreclosures, the drug dealings and shootings that were once remote from their neighbourhood are edging ever closer, a block at a time.