It wasn't poor people looking for housing who insisted that risk could be magically eliminated from the sub-prime market
It was the geniuses on Wall Street.
They're the ones who enabled, promoted and preached massive and irresponsable sub-prime lending by insisting that any risk could be dealt with via complex layers of securitization and diversification. They're the ones who spun straw into gold, or so we all thought.
It would be very unfair to blame only those who were seduced by the sight of the gold.