In One Wealthy County, $200K Income = Public Housing

If you're looking for the part of the country with the highest incomes, forget the tony suburbs of New York city or Los Angeles.  Instead you should set your sights on the land of milk and honey in the surrounds of Washington, DC.   The U.S. Census Bureau computes the median household income of nearby Fairfax Country, Virginia as $100,318 in 2006.  Fairfax County is the first county of its size to break the $100,000 median household income threshold.

And if you're looking for egregious examples of a poorly run government program, go to the same destination.  The Washington Post reports that the county's own records show evidence of hundreds of households taking advantage of subsidized housing even though their incomes grossly exceed limits designed to ensure that these homes go to the neediest families.

One household in particular makes more than $216,000 a year and still received subsidized housing benefits; another in the program rakes in a tidy $184,000. The county housing administrators do little to encourage occupants to move when their incomes allow for market-rate housing.

It should be noted that the families in this story all qualified for public housing when their incomes were lower and met the program guidelines.  They've just been allowed to stay long past the point of self-sufficiency.

Hopefully this scrutiny will force the county to reassess its public housing programs so it works for those families most in need of Fairfax County's help.  In any case, families at every income level can find apartments to fit their budgets on HotPads.com.