However, those market conditions sparked a post-Depression boom that sustained 65 straight years of appreciation in real estate. And according to one expert, it’s about to happen again.

“This is an unprecedented economic crisis, but it is spawning an unprecedented opportunity,” said Greg Rand, a 20-year real estate veteran and author of Crash-Boom (www.crashboom.com) from Career Press. “Real estate prices are at their lowest ebb in years, but anyone with a sense of history in the real estate market knows that those prices will rise as the economy improves and the people who got burned in the mortgage crisis are ready to try their hands at home ownership again. You can’t suppress the American Dream, but you can profit from it if you can have the strength and confidence to act.”

Rand’s argument is that recessions and depressions aren’t just about economics. There are other forces at play, too.

“There is a real and powerful psychological component married to a down economy,” he added. “When bulls turn into bears, they create a chilling effect that makes even Joe Six-Pack afraid of the economy. Wall Street loves to track ‘consumer confidence’ statistics, and the market always fluctuates based on fear. When there’s an uprising in the Middle East, gas prices go up to $4 per gallon on the irrational fear that any new regime will say, ‘You know, we don’t really want all that money from those Americans for this gunk we pull out of the ground.’ The prices always stabilize. The real estate market is no different. People act and react out of fear. Only the smart ones see through that haze to understand the historic reality that the prices always come back up.”

Rand cites five reasons why now is the best time to put your investment dollars into real estate:

• No Meltdown - There is no housing meltdown. There was a media and Wall Street meltdown. Housing will save us in the long haul.
• It’s Not About The Real Estate – The product at issue is not real estate. It’s America. You can own a piece of it, and as far as its long-term value goes, it’s better than Apple stock.
• Flipping Houses is a Myth – The “buy and flip” model is a sucker’s bet. It’s about building real, generational wealth.
• Condo = College Fund – Have a kid, buy a condo. If you invest the right way, you can build an investment that is comparable to any of the riskier alternatives investors lose their money on every day.
• Don’t Zoom In, Zoom Out – To understand the stock market you must zoom all the way in and see the pulse of the market, and that changes hourly. To understand real estate, all you have to do is zoom all the way out. If you stand too close you miss the trends, and the trends don’t change with the wind. They stay for the long term.

“It comes down to the idea that no matter how the markets change, no matter which way the winds shift, people will always need a place to live,” Rand added. “That’s been true of America since the first log cabin. If you plug into that concept, and leave fear in a box on the shelf, you can be ahead of the curve and ride the wave of the trends that matter.”

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“We have a $20 million budget gap, so difficult, almost draconian, measures have to be put on the table,” explained H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for Governor Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance.

Ironically, those cuts would come at a time when Californians need the programs most. A new report released this week from the non-profit, California Budget Project, Proposed Budget Cuts Come at a Time of Growing Need, argues that California’s economy hasn’t been weaker since the Great Depression. The 12-page report notes that Californians are ill-equipped to weather the cuts the governor is proposing.

The Golden State has lost more than a million jobs since the recession began, and it continues to lose tens of thousands of jobs every month. Six job seekers are searching for each available job. Enrollment in the state’s Food Stamp Program has increased 43%. The number of Californians receiving CalWorks welfare checks has grown by 86,000; the number enrolled in Medi-Cal has jumped by more than 470,000.

Nearly 900,000 children depend on Healthy Families, the children’s health program Schwarzenegger has proposed to eliminate. More than a half-million families depend on CalWORKS, the welfare program the governor has said needs to be scrapped.

Another program the governor wants to terminate, In Home Support Services for the elderly, disabled and blind, currently serves over 400,000 Californians, according to the state Department of Social Services.

Cutting these services could have dire consequences. For example, “If the Governor eliminates the entire IHSS, it’s going to lead to (poor, elderly people) dying alone in their apartments and SROs [single room occupancy], because in many cases the home care person is the only person who sees them,” said James Chionsini, a community organizer with the San Francisco organization, Planning for Elders in the Central City.

“It’s not even financially sound,” Chionsini said, “because the cost of home care for an entire year is cheaper than one or two trips to the emergency room,” where the old, blind and disabled will be more likely to land if IHSS is cut.

“The Governor has said he doesn’t want this to happen, which is why he’s engaged our congressional delegation and the White House” in an effort to get additional federal aid, spokesperson Palmer said.

Advocates note, however, that Schwarzenegger’s proposed cuts actually jeopardize federal matching funds that are meant to help states continue, and even expand, programs like Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and CalWORKs.

For instance, $2 billion in proposed cuts to social services could cause the Golden State to lose $5 billion from the federal budget, California Budget Project director Jean Ross said in a conference call Tuesday.

“The impact on California families and our state’s economy would be more than triple the savings in the Governor’s proposed reductions,” Ross said.

That Schwarzenegger will stick to his proposal is especially concerning in light of the federal budget announced this week by President Obama.

“There’s some good news for California in the President’s budget,” Ross said. “The President is continuing increased government’s share of the Medi-Cal program here in California. Each dollar the state spends will be more than met by the federal government.”

Palmer said he’s aware of the trade-off. “Given the fact that we have close to a $20 billion budget deficit, it’s pretty natural that we would lose some federal matching funds,” he said.

Palmer said Schwarzenegger will wait until May when the governor usually proposes his revised budget to the state legislature based on mid-year taxes collected and anticipated. At that point, if federal funds materialize, he will rescind his proposed action. Otherwise, Palmer said, “we’ll pull the trigger.”