leaflet: javascript scope issue within geojson onEachFeature function

I'm new to javascript and even newer to Leaflet (version 0.7.7), so I'm having difficulty determining how to ask this question.

With leaflet, when I click on a polygon, an ajax request is made, it is converted to geojson, and a popup appears on the map with some of the returned data. On the leaflet website, the example to do such a thing involves using the onEachFeature event of the geoJson method.

However, when I'm inside of the function called by onEachFeature, I can't access any variables outside of that function. In the example below, in the neighborhood_popup, I'd like to be able to access the data in the ajax response.

How can I access data outside of this onEachFeature function? See comments in the example below.

var map = L.map('map').setView([y, x], 11);

// add some other map features here.

var _neighborhood_lookup;
function neighborhood_lookup(latlng) {
    /* do an ajax request to get geojson data */

    var neighborhood_url="/path/to/api/url?lat=" + latlng.lat + "&long=" + latlng.lng;
    var jqxhr = $.get(neighborhood_url, function(res) {
        _neighborhood_lookup = res
        var popup = L.popup({maxWidth:400});
        var style = {}

        function neighborhood_popup(feature, layer) {
            popup.setLatLng(latlng);
            var place = feature.properties;


            /* THIS IS THE PROBLEM I'M HAVING
               I'm trying to get more information out of 
               _neighborhood_lookup at this location, which 
               is an ajax response. However, the _neighborhood_lookup
               is undefined at this point.  How do I access variables
               outside of this function scope? 
            */

            /* this part doesn't really matter for this question,
               but it's gathering variables and rendering them 

               in a handlebars template */
            var context = {
                name: place.name,
                long_name: place.long_name,
            };
            var html = popup_template(context);  
            // sets popup content 
            popup.setContent(html);

        }


        // I think this determines what leaflet feature was clicked
        var neighborhood_layer = L.geoJson(_neighborhood_lookup.neighborhood, {
            style: style,
            onEachFeature: neighborhood_popup
        });

        layergroup.clearLayers();
        layergroup.addLayer(neighborhood_layer);
        map.openPopup(popup);

    })
}

/* when a polygon an the map is clicked,
   we call the neighborhood_lookup function */
map.on('click', function(e) {
  neighborhood_lookup(e.latlng);
});

Update: Here is the json that comes in via the ajax request.

{"neighborhood": {"id":"108","type":"Feature","geometry": {"type":"Polygon","coordinates": [[[-87.684152,41.971901],[-87.684148,41.971794], [-87.684146,41.971748],[-87.684143,41.971665], ... [-87.684159,41.972107],[-87.684156,41.972037],
[-87.684154,41.971967],[-87.684152,41.971901]]] }, "properties": {"created":"2016-06-19T21:50:35.060937Z", "modified":"2016-0619T21:50:35.060967Z", "active":true, "name":"108", "uuid":"1d6162af-2202-40a4-8f1a-697e266a07b9",
"long_name":"Lincoln Square","stats": {} } } }