by Aileen Jacobson

When Renée Green bought her two-bedroom apartment at Prince and Elizabeth Streets in 1985, her friends and her brother warned her about living in what they called a slum. She didn't see the area that way. "Something drew me to it," said Ms. Green, a retired township clerk and town council member in Livingston, N.J., who is now 84.

As it turned out, she couldn't afford to use the place as a pied-à-terre, as she had intended, so she rented it out for 22 years before moving in full time in 2007. During those years, the area was radically transformed — her apartment, for which she paid $150,000, is probably worth 10 times that now, she said. But the qualities that drew her remain. "It's definitely a community," she said. "That's what I love about it."

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/