Living near friends and family, with Phil Levin

America is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness: marriage and birth rates, the number of close friendships, time spent with friends, and community involvement more broadly are all in decline. Phil Levin is helping to lead an interesting new movement away from all this self-imposed isolation and back toward social reconnection. Operating on the principle that every social problem is an entrepreneurial opportunity, Levin sees housing innovation -- in particular, making it easier for family and friends to live with or near each other -- as a promising way to help reknit the social fabric. He helped to start Culdesac, which builds car-free neighborhoods from scratch, and he is the founder of Live Near Friends, which helps people build or buy housing with people they know. And these business ventures grew out of his own experience with "co-living" arrangements in the Bay Area. Levin and Lindsey discuss Levin's personal housing experiences, the barriers facing people who want to follow his example, the factors driving growing interest in co-living, the disparate groups of people attracted to this lifestyle, and the prospects for group living arrangements to seed broader social revitalization.