Imagine living in New York City, where your family earns a healthy half-million dollars a year, but you’re only shelling out about $1,500 a month to rent a three-bedroom apartment. Not bad, right? Or let’s say you and your family reside in Los Angeles, where you’re making a respectable $200,000, but your four-bedroom apartment — at slightly more than $1,000 a month — is basically chump change. Still not impressed? How about Oxford, Nebraska, where a person with $1.6 million in assets spends just $300 a month to crash in a one-bedroom apartment. These are all real-life examples, as documented by The Washington Post. Normally one would expect to see well-off Americans acquire more expensive residences, but before you start praising these ostensibly frugal lifestyles, there’s a troublesome reason behind it — and it’s courtesy of taxpayers.

“In a new report, the watchdog for the Department of Housing and Urban Development describes these and more than 25,000 other ‘over income’ families earning more than the maximum income for government-subsidized housing as an ‘egregious’ abuse of the system,” writes the Post. “While the family in New York with an annual income of almost $500,000 raked in $790,500 in rental income on its real estate holdings in recent years, more than 300,000 families that really qualify for public housing lingered on waiting lists, auditors found.” All across the country, people who don’t need subsidized housing are gaming the system. Despite this, however, the government won’t be forcing these 25,000 ineligible families to get off the taxpayer dole. According to the IG report, “Since regulations and policies did not require housing authorities to evict over income families or require them to find housing in the unassisted market, over income families continued to reside in public housing units.” Moreover, HUD’s Milan Ozdinec says, “There are positive social benefits from having families with varying income levels residing in the same property.” That’s in line with the Obama administration’s plan unveiled this summer to segregate neighborhoods with race quotas. In a twisted way, HUD appears to already be doing just that — by subsidizing “the rich.” Instead of providing a hand to those who truly need help, the government would rather welcome you to Mr. Obama’s neighborhood.

Update: HUD is now backtracking on its eviction stance. According to one official, “It may be legally acceptable, but it is morally unacceptable for people who could pay market-rate rents to be in public housing.”