David Forbes had never lived in such a luxurious setting. His apartment building in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Prospect-Lefferts Gardens offers a bounty of amenities, including a fitness center, rooftop deck, karaoke lounge and mint-condition pool table.
Still, Mr. Forbes, 84, can’t beat back the discomfort. “I can’t get completely settled,” he said.
His studio apartment, which is half a mile from where he used to live in the neighborhood, is small but the issues go beyond a lack of space.
“Nobody gets to know anyone,” he said. “I mean, we’re very friendly over there on Lefferts Avenue with all the neighbors — Black, whites, Hispanics, up and down the block. It’s a great block.”
His old block is where Mr. Forbes lived in high school when his family moved to New York from Tupelo, Miss. And it’s where he returned in 2015, after his sister, Rena St. Lawrence, was told she had dementia. It was the kind of block where neighbors help move cars for street cleaning and pass the evenings on stoops.
Mr. Forbes helped her run the household, chipping in with maintenance and finances. The house had been in Mr. Forbes’s family since the 1950s, and his sister was raising several foster children when he returned. But it didn’t take too long before he discovered there had been changes to the deed for the property.
Private investors had visited the house, introduced themselves to Ms. St. Lawrence and offered her financial compensation in exchange for an ownership stake in the property.
“My sister had dementia and people were taking advantage of her,” Mr. Forbes said. “They bought into the house, paid her and added their name to the deed in the form of a corporation.”
Once he discovered this transaction, Mr. Forbes, whose name was also on the deed, began an eight-year effort in civil court to win back full ownership of the property. As he saw it, his sister had entered an agreement that she did not understand because of her deteriorating mental health.
“My sister would never have let that happen if she was in her right mind,” he said. “She was a good businesswoman.”
Ultimately, Mr. Forbes’s efforts in civil court were unsuccessful. “The case was too complicated for free legal aid — and every private lawyer I talked to wanted 10 grand.”
Ms. St. Lawrence died in 2024 at age 100. Mr. Forbes, who is retired from a career delivering Wonder Bread products, lives on a fixed income from Social Security. He knew he wouldn’t be able make the payment that would soon be due for a reverse mortgage that his sister had taken out on the home in a transaction separate from the one involving the investors.
So, in 2025, he turned to Lefferts Avenue for help, knocking on the door of his next-door neighbor, Alison Novak. His connection with Ms. Novak, a real estate developer, went back to 2017 when her family moved to the block.
“I had gotten to know Alison and her family,” he said. “She has two young girls and a husband, all very friendly. She and I were comfortable with each other.”
Ms. Novak got to know Mr. Forbes’s cream-colored Escalade. “He would bring out a little stool and I would see his sister with her church hat on, and he’d help her into the car, which was a very sweet sort of thing to see.”
Like Mr. Forbes, Ms. Novak understood that the wealth of Lefferts Avenue extended well beyond property values. “It is a really, really lovely block,” she said.
Mr. Forbes knew that Ms. Novak worked in real estate and wanted her advice about the house. At first, Ms. Novak tried to negotiate a settlement for Mr. Forbes to buy back the ownership stake Ms. St. Lawrence had sold.
It didn’t work.
“So, I had to put the house up for sale,” Mr. Forbes said.
But when it hit the market in 2025, it did not find a buyer. “The price that the other investors wanted to list it for was just too high,” Ms. Novak said.
So, she made a proposal to Mr. Forbes. “I said, ‘What if I make an offer, is that OK with you?’”
It wasn’t just that she had secretly always dreamed of joining the two adjacent structures, creating more room for her growing family and for grandparents to visit, but she also wanted to keep Mr. Forbes in the house — and on Lefferts Avenue.
“We all know Mr. Forbes,” she said. “Part of this whole experience has been feeling like there’s something important there for us to protect. That’s very motivating.”
The two of them began discussing the possibility of Ms. Novak buying the property and renovating it, complete with a rental unit that Mr. Forbes could live in with a lifetime lease.
“She asked about fixing up a place for me to come back to,” he said. “That’s very considerate of her. So, I said, ‘Yes, go ahead, try it.’”
Ms. Novak bought the property for $1.65 million at the beginning of 2026, and Mr. Forbes split the proceeds with the corporation that had been added to the deed. Before renovations began, she helped him secure a yearlong lease for his current apartment.
He moved into the studio apartment on March 1 and recently qualified for a New York City rental assistance program that will soon pay 90 percent of his $3,000 monthly rent. Ms. Novak plans to complete the renovations by early 2027.
“I told Mr. Forbes, when I’m finished, you can decide if you want to move back in,” she said. “It’s really so important to me that he has — and feels — true agency. It’s important that he’s deciding what he wants, especially because his sister went through a lot of manipulation.”
Even though Mr. Forbes’s studio is only about a half mile from the old Lefferts Avenue block, the distance is still difficult. He mostly uses a walker to get around and has been back to visit only a few times.
He misses being on the block, in the familiar house. But he also has two grown sons, one in New Jersey, the other in South Carolina, who have both offered to let him live with their families.
He isn’t sure what he’s going to do.
Some days, he said, he gets worn out just thinking about when the renovations are complete. “At my age, I don’t want to move.”
He isn’t comfortable in his current building, but there is a temptation to avoid the hassle of boxing up his life again. “I turn 85 at the end of this year. I’m supposed to be done with moving.”
The pull of Lefferts Avenue, though, just might just be the thing to bring him back. “A big part of me wants it,” he said.
Ms. Novak is hoping he’ll move back — and not just because she and her family would like to have their friendly neighbor back.
“I also think people should have the opportunity to grow old in their homes,” she said. “We can make a safe place for him to live that’s stable. It’s really important to us that he can live there for as long as he wants.”