These days an income of $497,911 is a pretty good deal right? A family of four in New York City knows it is! But there’s just one teeny tiny problem with this picture. You see, that same family of four has a very unique living situation.

As of July 2014, the family paid an income-based ceiling rent of $1,574 a month.

Guess what? The 3-bedroom apartment that they live in is PUBLIC HOUSING. Yes, you read that correctly. As the Office of the Inspector General found out, that family and 25,000+ others are considered over-income beneficiaries of our tax dollars. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) doesn’t seem to care that the family no longer needs the monetary help. You can read the entire report here.

Let me point out that there are affordable apartments available all over New York City. Yes, some require income caps, but many others don’t. The one pictured above is a 2 bedroom priced at $385,000 with a maximum income cap of $112,000. Does the HUD family of four fit that criteria. Likely not, unless they quit taking government assistance. Oh but wait, they have nothing to worry about. You see, HUD won’t take away their tax-payer assisted income. In fact…

The housing authority did not evict this family from its four-bedroom unit “because its policy does not require it to evict over-income families because HUD regulations don’t require it,” the report said.

“The authority claimed that evicting over-income families would work against HUD’s efforts to deconcentrate poverty in public housing developments.

While you try to wrap your head around that asinine explanation, keep in mind that the NY family is just one of many who is making bank from our hard-earned money.

In Los Angeles, a family of five that’s lived in public housing since 1974 made $204,784 last year but paid $1,091 for a four-bedroom apartment. And a tenant with assets worth $1.6 million — including stocks, real estate and retirement accounts — last year paid $300 for a one-bedroom apartment in public housing in Oxford, Neb. [emphasis added]

A millionaire in Nebraska, one who has $1.6 million to play with, is on the public dole for $300 a month??!! By the way, the low-income threshold for Nebraska is $33,500, and said tenant wasn’t evicted because the lease was never violated. Well alrighty then! Oh but wait, there’s more.

Newark, NJ and Jersey City, NJ have 134 and 131 families respectively whose incomes have far exceeded the federal limits for housing subsidies. Meanwhile there are 25,283 families combined from both cities who are and have been on the wait list for public housing, some for years. And yet HUD won’t kick the over-income families out because poverty??!!

How is this Ok? How is any of this ok? Family living in gov housing making $498K a year & HUD totally cool with that http://t.co/wXLeKynIKy

— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 18, 2015

NONE of this is ok. Especially when you add in that OUR taxpayer dollars, $104.4 million in fact, will be paid to these families next year. That is $104.4 million that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should use toward getting truly eligible families into homes and perhaps direct some of those funds to the HUD’S new homeless shelter study, but they aren’t. So those on the wait list for a home wait longer and the homeless continue to suffer.

Oh never mind about those poor souls. HUD could care less. They are more concerned about the audit itself and what might happen to those sad over-incomed families.

“Forcing families to leave public housing could impact their ability to maintain employment if they are not able to find suitable housing in the neighborhood,” Ozdinec wrote. “Further, for families with children, it may be more difficult to find affordable child care, and it may impact school-age children’s learning if they are forced to change schools during a school year.”

You know what? I. Don’t. Care. Those families were smart enough to generate incomes of thousands and millions of dollars, and did so while living off of OUR money. They and HUD should to step up to the plate and do what is right, but they won’t. This particular gravy train need to be brought to a screeching halt ASAP.