My name is Binya Applebaum, and I write for the editorial board of the New York Times about economic policy issues.
I write a lot about housing because I think it's a huge problem in this country.
We have a critical lack of affordable housing, and trying to put a spotlight on the lack of affordable housing is something I've spent a lot of time doing in recent years.
I got an email from a guy who works at the American Enterprise Institute bracently, who studies housing issues named Ed Pinto.
He said he had a solution to the housing problem confronting this nation.
I get a lot of emails like that, but what really struck me about it was he said that he had found that solution in the town where he grew up.
So that was a bowling alley, that three story building that's now commercial, and offices, that's the same building.
It's just been refurbished, but it actually hasn't changed that much when I actually looked at the houses.
Ed grew up in a town called Palisades park.
It's a suburb of New York, just about 2 miles west of the George Washington Bridge.
Do you want to just ride with us or do you have a car, or do you want to just walk?
We met up there recently.
It's right on that corner.
Yeah.
So this is Washington Place, the street that I grew up on.
The beauty of this house was I could go down to the corner, go to the grocery store delicatessen without ever crossing a street.
When I was five or six years old, we had a ranch style house that my father built in about 1951.
Had three bedrooms and, I think a bath and a half and a two car garage that was detached in the back.
And like a classic post war american suburban home.
It was a classic post war suburban home.