I think that every kid should have a tree house! Melinda Hackett is a 49 year old artist. She lives on 12th Street in New York City's Greenwich Village and has three kids and two dogs. Now, this part of NYC is trendy, expensive and quite old. Her 4 story townhouse dates back to the 1860's. She has a tiny backyard with a really, really big tree. She paid a couple of carpenters $5,000 to build a real neat cedar tree house. You'll notice that it is completely round and sits about 10 feet off the ground. One problem: No building permit! Neighbors raised a stink and a legal battle followed. You see, there aren't a lot of tree houses in NYC and the building permit people didn't know how to classify the structure. In the end, it was called "recreational equipment." Case closed! The kids have their tree house!
And they all lived happily ever after!
