What is called the “subprime mortgage crisis” reflects a fundamental crisis in the housing system and a fundamental ideological blinders to the alternatives that the crisis suggests. The crisis is not a crisis of liquidity in the mortgage market, or a failure of regulation, nor is it the same as the crisis of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is a different crisis, with which it is often confused. It is rather the result of the inability of the market to provide adequate and affordable housing for large numbers of Americans, and of the ideological commitment to homeownership as the incarnation of the American Dream for the masses.