Fighting Blight in Baltimore 

This video was made in collaboration with Galaxy Gives and REFORM Alliance. To learn more, visit galaxygives.com and reformalliance.com.

At least she is starting somewhere. She is doing her part for the community. She is planting a seed of hope to uplift her community. Hopefully it will grow to inspire someone else to figure out how to flourish the community for those still there.

What an amazing woman! I am donating to this cause.

Nneka Namdi is actually doing work in my city- thanks for covering this. Notice the city govt is in no way a part of this. Because blight is a purposeful action of our government.

I go to school in Baltimore (Morgan State) and more projects like this need to exist! Thank you for the coverage

Real Talk... Thanks for being a part of the solution instead of being a part of the problem. Communities are what the people command and demand they be.

Nneka N'namdi is a genius & saint. communities across this nation need to study what she's doing & duplicate it. it just shows how important truly caring is.

My whole family grew up in baltimore. The projects to be specifically. they still see the same things 40 years later and nothings changed. As a kid I always thought it was sad. And now graduating from college seeing the same thing I wonder how all my friends could move to all the wealthy areas of Baltimore (like fed hill….) and picture Baltimore life as that when there’s all these other run down communities that embody and surround bmore? It’s crazy and toxic and change needs to happen.

I work in the City and seeing this I am glad that orgs like this exist. Definitely will donate to this.

I visited Baltimore,the first time 8 months ago and my jaw dropped when I saw the # of abandoned rundown homes . It was so weird staying in a nice luxury air bnb and literally around the corner there are rows of run down abandoned homes. It's nice to see people fighting to build their commun ity back up .

Currently live in Baltimore. Will definitely be looking into this.

Shout out to her for doing the work!! It'll take a HUGE investment to overcome this kind of blight after industry left, middle class fled to suburbs, then shut out Black people for those middle class jobs and housing through redlining. Wealth is tied directly to home ownership. There must be reparations to close that gap that was allowed by the government for so long so these areas can move forward!

I'm from Baltimore, and sadly it's been like this since I can remember. Glad to see someone is trying to do something, because the higher-ups just don't care unless you publicly shame them, and sometimes even then they don't care.

That’s literally Trenton! I never knew that this had a name other than corruption. I’m really grateful for people like her working hard to destigmatize urban areas & revitalize these beautiful communities.

High taxes, high crime, poor education and corrupt local government leads to a declining population. Until these things change Baltimore will continue to decline and there is no indication that any reforms are coming .

beautiful video. supporting her from PG County, MD💙

With the amount of homeless and lack of affordable housing in this country it is just sicking to see so many abandoned homes.

3 things NOT mentioned in this video that needs to be addressed: 1) High Crime that needs to be severely reduced and controlled; 2) FUNDING of and a lot more Police with strong law enforcement; and 3) Strong programs to deal with mental Health. Otherwise, nothing is going to change. Both Companies that open there to provide jobs and opportunities, and organizations to build and re-build will not invest if these things are not addressed. There needs to be safety and stability. Why invest in non-safety and instability?

One kinda funny thing I noticed when I moved to Baltimore was that sometimes they just put giant wooden struts to support buildings that are decaying and falling towards the sidewalk and street.

Blame on everyone else! That’s helpful.

If those property owners will not renovate those properties and bring them up to code. Then the cities should invoke Eminent domain.

Love love love

Baltimore is a great city with great things to do. All the best for this cause and the people living and visiting there.

Want to do something of the same for Chicago. So much potential here amongst us.

Gods bless this amazing woman!

This sounds like an awesome project. I've been following the Strong Towns movement and think it could really add to the work being done in Baltimore.

As a drunk I know personally those liquors store aren’t keeping themselves open

Thank you. This is a great video.

I live in Baltimore. This city is not improving. She has a good idea but the people in charge around here couldn't possibly care any less. The crime is through the roof. Start with that.

love this

So sad to see so many beautiful brick buildings in that condition.

Love this

As someone from Baltimore, I'm so glad there is an initiative/program that is dedicated to this, I have to drive through the city to get to my job each day, and see all the non-utilized land is just sad.

May God bless you 🙏🏾

Philadelphia has a lot it can learn from this thought process with vacancies. Especially the community engagement aspects on education on blight

So is blight what happens to run down communities that don’t get gentrified?

As a resident of B-more who's traveled to impoverished ares throughout Central and South America, I can tell you Baltimore city is really in it's most abysmal and abandoned state ever.

We need programs like this in Stockton California

Awesome. My kid goes to JHU and I see the blight every time I visit.

Where are the local councillors? Any representation?? Who's responsible for managing these communities?

You had me until "eliminate private property."

Go Team 👍👍👍!

This is very interesting. Troubling to the mind as well

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Not once in this entire video was crime mentioned as a factor. No businesses or contractors will work in a warzone: 301 homicides in 2022 and counting.

This is indeed a brilliant woman. Blighted communities need to delete the package/liquor stores and close down the Chinese takeouts who take money out of those areas and return nothing. In addition, the people must wake up and stop complaining about government. Do for self and stop littering and teach their children to respect the environment and their elders.

This problem could have been handled a long time ago. A partnership between Habitat for Humanity and the public trade schools to fix up some houses. The city could have seized most of these properties, made them livable, and supply the city with affordable housing. Our leaders are just plain incompetent. Public housing is supposed to be built on North Ave. but it hasn't started yet probably due to fact there aren't enough heavy equipment operators. They should have school devoted to the construction trades.

Blight hurts us all!

urban land is simply too valuable for staying abandoned for long

But she really does not say how to solve the problem of the bad buildings. Would it not be possible for the city or county to demolish and clear the bad buildings and then charge the property owner for the demolition and remediation? Could the lot be returned to nature and then cleared if a new use is found?

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🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

They should have been done something about the urban decay and urban blight

The work for change in the US have always been did duty of the black Americans not because they are not entitled to such development and improvement of their condition by the government or the states but the fact it's that the United States was never built in consideration of black Americans so having to know the reality your responsibility is to create conditions that will tackle the deficiencies that are created as a means to suppress black communities but I think they spend too many time in condemnation pointing out fingers which was not wrong but it didn't go with creating solution. I live in the country where my community was very impoverished luckily a very few of us went overseas and some of us were inspired we came home organized ourselves organized I community and empowered our own selves and now we are a very sustainable community we are envied by our own government and we have created a political system that is used to empowering and we have educated ourself politically to understand what is relevant and what is not and it has created a problem because most politicians don't even come to campaign in our own community because they are scared knowing that there's nothing you are going to point out that we have not done for ourselves both in economic empowerment, health, education and gentrification of our environment our agricultural sector as well commercialized to create wealth so the government is becoming rather as a nuisance and it is giving them tough time to infiltrate our community with political b*******.. so for change to a call Black Americans should when I say black Americans I mean the ones with brains should put their money where the mouth is and take ownership and all agenda real life that's the only way you can blame the government all year round nothing is going to change to how you want it.

Woman destroys children's playground!

Drug users destroyed this once great city. Drugs become more important then supporting family. Drugs came more important then community. Its not we vs them.

We don't take care of our own and then blame others. The older generations took care of the community. I witnessed the change. The kids of the last generation didn't take care of what their parents left them.

Why the city not picking the debris and rubbish up the garbage company

The migrants from Central America are going to love their opportunity to rehab and own these buildings

This is good information on how to turn blight around.

Nothing makes a person destroy where they live. As long as people don't hold themselves accountable, they will never succeed. And they don't.

What does "Decolonize" mean?

Not a word of criticism towards crime. Baltimore has the problems it has ultimately because criminals are controlling the buildings and streets. Literally if you replaced the criminally oriented people of baltimore with, say, people from Japan or people from Korea, it would become a safe city and an economic power house.

Anyone doing good work like this is always going to be a dog whistle for the right. To those who cry about the crime and get racial about it, I'd ask them how they'd have turned out if born in Harlem Park. This initiative is but a speck of sand, but it has to start somewhere. Regards from the UK.

Why doesn't Baltimore start removing those abandoned buildings? Just let the grass grow until someone comes along that will build something in its place. Unfortunately until you can get rid of the gangs and the drugs no investors will spend money there.

Red lining? . Axx you don’t take care of your own community, it happens in every community you settle in

The problem is the mindset of the people, most of them are hopeless because of lack of good education

Why all these troubles? Look at the demographics lady!

Not interested in new one in Baltimore

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THE WIRE

This is so cool! I want to help!

St. Louis has blight too and it seems to be associated with a certain race of people….

The only way you'll fix blight is by gentrifying. Educating only works so much because the people that stay in those conditions are comfortable.

Who is funding this? They make it seem as though she just woke up one day and did this all on her own. Seems suspicious.

De colonize the idea of property? What is she talking about?

All I heard was “gimme gimme, it’s someone else’s fault, property ownership bad, it’s racism” …. How about some personal accountability for once. Smh

Why isn't someone like this the Mayor instead of this constant flow of useless crooks we've been stuck with? Might actually see some change.

Go tell LeBron James to help you people🐒🦧💯💩💩🐀