Do you remember all the gloomy stories several years back about gas getting close to $4 a gallon? Compare that to the number of jubilant tales you saw early this year when gas was under $2 per gallon.

Real estate reporting has been similar. Many stories mourned the losses of homeowners during the 2007-2010 housing crash. But for some people, the foreclosure crisis was the best thing that ever happened to them financially. How many stories have you seen about people able to buy low and move into houses they could not have afforded earlier?

Fort Myers, Fla., was one of America’s hardest-hit cities. Lehigh Acres was the hardest-hit part of the Fort Myers metropolitan area, and in 2010 I drove up and down its ghost town streets. Many homeowners who had bought near the peak were way underwater. Those living off retirement income and planning to stay in their houses could wait out the crash, but others lacked income for mortgage payments as unemployment in the area quadrupled to about 15 percent (see “Ghost streets,” Feb. 27, 2010).

The real unemployment number was even worse. Many trim carpenters and drywall experts had their own small companies and didn’t show up as officially unemployed—they were just functionally destitute. Building permit applications dropped 99 percent. The saving grace for some local workers was that Chinese drywall placed in some houses had a high sulfur content, so they could find jobs stripping houses down to bare walls. But others had to move.

The housing crisis ended not through government programs but through something fundamental: price. When a $250,000 home dropped to $50,000, a buyer showed up—and then another for the house next door, and others down the street. Lots of retirees moved in. They often paid cash. Those who put their own money into a house often had more pride of ownership than those who had bought it with zero money down. Some houses that dropped to $50,000 are now back up to $180,000.

Last month I drove around Lehigh Acres with a homebuilder. The area looks born again: Cars in driveways, tricycles on front porches, 98 percent occupancy. Every block has its sadness: Many who lost their homes are now in apartments, and their experience has often been hard. Every block also has its happiness: Many who were in apartments are now in homes that suddenly became affordable.

What have we learned? Maybe some individuals have learned about the need to save. Maybe some builders have learned not to speculate. Maybe the government has learned not to pressure bankers to make bad loans for demographic reasons. Maybe some bankers have seen there are worse things than declining a loan and watching the would-be customer go across the street to a competitor bank.

Or, given our human nature, maybe not.

The next ‘dignity’ to be affirmed

Question from a WORLD reader: “Now that transgender is virtually mainstream, what’s the next issue for the cultural left?”

Polygamy is clearly on the agenda. At a dinner a dozen years ago I sat across from a Princeton professor who favored same-sex marriage but was against threesomes. I had fun accusing him of being a “two-ist.” Now, two-ism will be the new homophobia. Popular culture has already softened us up with the HBO show Big Love (2006-2011) and similar products. Now the legal cases are coming.

Also, cultural leftists (and maybe some classicists) will push for lowering the age of sexual consent to puberty, or lower: That was part of “the glory that was Greece,” so why shouldn’t America become the new Athens? Most people will push back on this issue. Look at reaction to the Penn State evil. Look at the Oscar victory of Spotlight, which lionized reporters for going after man/boy sex involving Roman Catholic priests. But those favoring the change may agree that pederasts in a position of authority over young persons should control themselves—and then they’ll work to legalize purportedly “consensual pederasty.”

The cultural left will also ask, “What’s wrong with incest?” The first stage will be repeal of laws forbidding sex between close relatives: Rhode Island appears to be the only state that has repealed its prohibition of incestuous sex, but France and several other countries allow incest between consenting adults, and we want to be more like Europe, n’est-ce pas?

The second stage will be legalization of incestuous marriage. When childbearing was the central task of marriage, it made sense for the state to forbid a brother and sister marrying, but now that Justice Anthony Kennedy has taught us that the crucial objective is an affirmation of dignity, anti-incest laws are vestigial, right? —M.O.