Reporters: Eric Nalder, Deborah Nelson and Alex Tizon Photographer: Greg Gilbert Photo editor: Fred Nelson Designer: Michael Kellams Graphics: Karen Kerchelich, Deb Dahrling, Chris Soprych and Phil Loubere Copy editor: Steven Ray Researcher: Cathy Donaldson Project editor: David Boardman

If you saw how more than 100,000 Native-American families are living, you'd probably want to help them.

Children, parents and grandparents are sleeping in dilapidated cars, teetering trailers and rotting, one-room shacks. Many have no electricity, no toilets, no running water.

You probably wouldn't mind that some of your taxes are going to a federal program aimed at helping these people get into decent homes, especially because it's designed to help them help themselves.

You wouldn't mind — until you learned, as The Seattle Times has, how millions of those dollars have been spent.

In Snohomish County, the money went to build a spacious manor for a couple making more than $90,000 a year.

In Oregon, it bankrolled business ventures inspired by a millionaire former professional-football player.

In Connecticut, it built houses for members of one of the richest tribes in America, operators of the largest casino in the Western Hemisphere.

Across the nation — in tribe after tribe, state after state - the Indian-housing program is riddled with fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

That program, run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has distributed some $3 billion to tribal-housing authorities over the past five years.

During that same period, under the direction first of Republican Jack Kemp and then of Democrat Henry Cisneros, HUD has drastically cut its monitoring of how that money has been distributed and spent.

The Times spent six months visiting reservations, interviewing tribal and government officials and reviewing records to find out what deregulation has wrought.

The answer: It has turned HUD into a cash machine, spitting out dollars with few restrictions.

There is so little monitoring, in fact, that it's impossible to determine how much has been inappropriately spent. The Times found dozens of cases; there are undoubtedly more.

HUD's new policies not only open the door to corruption, but invite it.

"They are systematically destroying Indian housing as we know it," said Tony Arroyos, a housing consultant. "There is no monitoring of the pot of gold."

That pot of gold has benefited a favored few, depriving the majority in what experts say is America's worst housing crisis. Even in King County, half an hour from Planet Hollywood and NikeTown, there are Indians living in shacks as decrepit as any in Depression-era Appalachia.

This week, we'll take you around the country to witness what's happened under HUD's deregulation — and what's happened to your money.

The Times' findings are surprising high-level HUD officials.

"The picture you are painting is one, frankly, of us being asleep at the switch nationwide," said Michael Janis, second-in-command of HUD's public-housing programs. "I don't deny you have found problems and issues."

In response, HUD Secretary Cisneros has already ordered an internal investigation.