Foreclosures Result in Affordable Homes

Ineresting take, from the right- leaning blogger Volokh on the mortgage crisis:

...the government has for too long artificially propped up housing prices through restrictive zoning laws, government subsidization of dubious mortgages and other such measures. Left-liberals who have historically complained (with some justice) about the shortage of affordable low-income housing in these cities should be particularly enthusiastic about the recent decline in real estate prices. At the very least, the resulting benefit to lower-income families gives liberals - and the rest of us - additional reason to be skeptical about the desirability of government-subsidized efforts to prop up real estate prices by guaranteeing mortgages, bailing out lenders and borrowers, and other similar measures that seem to be politically popular at the moment. If we genuinely want to help the less affluent, we should let this market correction run its course.