By J. K. Schmid, AFRO Staff Writer

“Do not pick up anything on the street,” Isadore Hampton tells her great nephew.

Hampton is worried about needles and other dangerous waste littering the sidewalks of Baltimore’s blighted communities. The longer properties remain abandoned, the more likely they’ll draw squatters or turn into shooting galleries, she says.

The immediate threat is one thing, but she’s also concerned for her great nephew’s hopes and future.

“After a while, after they’ve seen enough, it becomes normal to them,” Hampton told the AFRO.

Hampton, 68, retired, reached out to the AFRO in response to a photograph published in last week’s paper: A photo of 2300 East Cold Spring Lane Morgan Park/Lauraville.

“My question is what is the purpose of showing photos if there isn’t a real plan to do something about the problem?” Hampton wrote. “The photos were not accompanied by any actionable plans.”

Calls to Ryan Dorsey’s office, Baltimore City Council District 3, asking for plans and progress were not immediately returned. But the AFRO will be reaching out again as the week continues and a tentative appointment has been made via email.

In meantime, Baltimore resident Nneka Nnamdi, is making inroads on the problem of Baltimore blight and has larger plans for the new year.

Nnamdi, with the Living Well Center for Social and Economic Vibrancy has also founded an organization called Fight Blight Bmore.

“The Living Well is a center for social and economic vibrancy and we are committed to providing competent space for soulful expression, for entrepreneurship development, for general access to artists,” Nnamdi told the AFRO. “It is more grass roots in the sense that we provide both space and technical assistance for artists and social entrepreneurs as well as community.”

The Living Well served as a “catalyst” for Fight Blight Bmore, Nnamdi said.

“[Fight Blight Bmore] has two aspects: one is a mobile app that helps people in communities to identify and report blight, that we’re working on; it is in the last stages of getting ready to go into the Apple app store,” Nnamdi said. “The second piece is a community development initiative that we’ve aimed at teaching people what blight means, how it came to be, how it impacts us on a daily basis and helps to craft solutions or support the crafting of solutions by communities to remediate blight.”

Relying on citizens’ local perspectives and first-hand experience with blight, Nnamdi says she aims to support and develop these kinds of solutions in order to fight blight without surrendering to gentrification. The app is part of a larger project to distribute data to residents and organize local leadership, she says.

“The lived experiences of people are going to get the most sustainable and equitable solutions,” Nnamdi said. “Municipal and private solutions to blight often are fancy ways to ensure gentrification.”

Progress is slow right now.

Fight Blight Bmore is working “one house at a time,” Nnamdi said. “One house and one lot is a part of our larger strategy to take and ‘unblight’ that whole 700 block of Fremont Avenue between Dolphin and Lafayette.”

The work has already housed youths transitioning out of homelessness, Nnamdi said.

Fight Blight Bmore plans to open its own space in January.

“What is the City doing?” Hampton asked the AFRO. “Are they really taking the responsibility when it’s reported? Neighborhood’s need hope.”