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Notes -
Firstly, the widespread availability of mortgages for ordinary people predates the boom in MBS issuance by decades. The boom in MBS issuance occurred as a result of the GLB Act in 1999. There was a specific period of a few years when the vast majority of (certainly privately-issued) MBS ever issued were issued (or, from Wikipedia). Certainly, securitization (including of mortgages, although usually commercial mortgages) had a very long history, but the MBS market that exacerbated/caused the financial crisis wasn't responsible for people "being able to afford" a 30-year mortgage, no.
Secondly, while MBS prices certainly affect interest rates on new mortgages, I'm less sure that the existence of the MBS market itself was 'responsible' for rates being lower than they would otherwise have been in the early 2000s. That's an unfalsifiable thesis in any case, but I think the default view should be that the lending environment of the pre-crash age was more dependent upon the government, on the Fed and on the wider macroeconomic landscape than it was on the existence of the MBS market.
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