It is hard to tell which is more incredible... The fact people are making almost a quarter million a year and still living in public housing or the conclusion the WaPo's Amy Gardner makes in this story.

Some in Fairfax Public Housing Make Six Figures

By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer

Hundreds of families living in housing subsidized by Fairfax County taxpayers exceed income caps designed to ensure that only the neediest receive assistance, a review of county records shows.

In the most extreme cases, Fairfax is underwriting rents for families making well into six figures: One household getting help makes more than $216,000 a year; another, $184,000. Dozens of others -- making $60,000, $70,000, $90,000 -- exceed eligibility caps. And they do so with the tacit approval of county housing administrators, who do little to encourage occupants to move on when their fortunes improve. ...

The fact that higher-income families choose to remain in subsidized housing illustrates the critical lack of affordable housing in Fairfax....

That's not what it illustrates at all. What it illustrates is another failure of big government. That someone making almost a quarter of a million dollars a year is living off the dole is simply appalling. But here is how Amy Gardner tries to explain it away in the next sentence.

The median new-home price in the region's largest jurisdiction is $960,000, and the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,306, according to county data.

I can't afford to live in The Hamptons... Is it the responsibility of the government to subsidize my rent? Besides, why can't people making 200,000 a year afford 1,300 a month rent?? That's about 12% of their income. They should should (conservatively) be able to afford triple (or more of) that.

Then the story goes Alice in Wonderland on us...

The incomes also reflect, critics say, a disconnect between county practices and its housing policies, which aim in most cases to help families making less than half of Fairfax's median annual household income of $94,500 for a family of four. Fairfax leaders have long put affordable housing at the tops of their priority lists: Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) helped establish an initiative in 2005 to funnel more than $20 million a year toward the preservation of lower-cost housing.

Did it ever occur to the "Fairfax leaders" that artificially funneling $20 million a year into the marketplace actually INCREASED rental costs??? None of them figured this out?

But here is the saddest part of all...

County housing officials emphasize -- and a review of county and federal housing rules confirms -- that they have broken no rules by letting tenants remain after their incomes rise. They say every household met eligibility caps when they entered the program.

Government. Done. Wrong.