Home Values, Data Retention, and the CEI Podcast

Home Values

According to the Pew Center, federal policies aimed at increasing home ownership in minority communities may actually have decreased home values in those communities.

Research Associate Matthew Melchiorre explains how the Federal Housing Administration is at least partly to blame for the drop in values.

“The chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, California Representative Joe Baca, vociferously advocated for low FHA lending standards and for seller-financed down payments before and after the housing bubble burst. After President Bush outlawed the latter post-crisis, Baca cosponsored a bill to reinstate seller-financed FHA down payment assistance despite their obvious danger. His fervor to reintroduce such an obvious source of systemic risk makes more sense in light of the $25,000 contribution that AmeriDream made in October 2008 to a charitable organization that Baca founded. Not only did this attempt at pursuing social justice have the opposite effect than initially intended, but some of the motives that drove such foolish policy reek of ethically questionable backdoor politics. Social injustice is a better term to describe the whole debacle.”

Data Retention

The “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011” would force commercial Internet providers to store data on the customer Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for an entire year.

Policy Fellow Luke Pelican explains why legislators should be wary of supporting the act as it’s written.

“Child exploitation is a heinous crime and should be punished severely. Allocating more resources to law enforcement to pursue such criminals and evaluating the effectiveness of current data sharing procedures is a logical first step. Instead, H.R. 1981 will impose a collection regime that casts suspicions on ordinary law-abiding Americans. The retention requirement will burden Internet providers with significant equipment and maintenance costs, which will inevitably be passed onto consumers. The legislation draws no distinction between large companies and smaller outfits, and would impose substantial burdens on providers who are forced to refit their networks in order to comply.”

CEI Podcast

In the most recent CEI Podcast, Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young interviews Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh on immigration reform. Listen here.