Anne Blumenberg knew the issue well: Vacant houses were just about everywhere in Baltimore, posing not only an eyesore but a danger to the community.

People would file in and out of the buildings at all hours of the day. There was a risk of fire or structural collapse, but no apparent law forcing landlords to keep up the properties.

Blumenberg, then the executive director of the nonprofit Community Law Center, brought a team of pro bono attorneys together to look for a solution. They only needed to go back some 350 years to English common law, which allowed people to fix a nuisance property next to them if the owner wouldn’t address it and then try to recover the costs later.

With one problem solved, another was waiting: Who would actually devote their time and resources to fix up vacant properties? Recovery of the costs wasn’t guaranteed.

There just wasn’t an entity they could think of to take on the task, said Michael Sarbanes, then an intern at the center who would go on to work in state and local government. So Blumenberg replied: “Well, let’s create one.”

Much of Blumenberg’s work was like that during her decades at the Community Law Center, which she founded with like-minded lawyer-activists in 1983. She utilized creative legal tactics to address massive issues in the city, including the use of lead paint in homes, friends and former colleagues said.

Baltimore and its neighborhoods are better places for her advocacy, they said — so her impact will stretch far beyond her years here. Blumenberg died Aug. 7 of a pulmonary embolism. She was 79.

“She really saw herself as a problem-solver, not really as a lawyer,” said Kristine Dunkerton, who succeeded Blumenberg as executive director of the Community Law Center in 2005.

Blumenberg, a lifelong Baltimorean, was born Feb. 8, 1946, and raised in the Waverly neighborhood. She only left the city briefly to attend school, which she funded herself, and returned after obtaining her law degree from Catholic University. While in Washington, she befriended a group of activists building a summer camp for children from low-income families.

“It was an eye-opening experience,” she told Baltimore City Paper in 2000, “and a hell of a lot more interesting than anything I’d done before. The people were great, and the spirit of the place was wonderful.”

Blumenberg worked for a handful of nonprofit legal groups before and after her time at the Community Law Center, but that was her baby. In the organization’s early years, it focused mostly on public safety, but later expanded to address real estate, zoning and economic development.

When Dunkerton started at the center as an intern in the late 1990s, the organization was focused “very heavily on working with communities in Baltimore that were the forgotten neighborhoods that weren’t seeing resources come to them at all,” she said. Many of them were experiencing high rates of crime and receiving few social services.

The champions of the communities were the people who lived there, who were doing the work day in and out to keep the streets clean and safe and make it a nice place to live, she said. The Community Law Center, and Blumenberg, wanted to work directly with those people. Unlike many other legal organizations at the time, it mainly represented community groups instead of individuals.

Blumenberg would say “there are so many good people here, and good people outweigh any of the problems,” Dunkerton said. “And we’re going to help these good people figure out how to make their block, their neighborhood, as good as we can make it with what we can bring in. As lawyers, we’ll use whatever skills and influence we have to make that happen.”

And she did. She was famous for finding innovative solutions to old problems, and she was well known throughout City Hall and in the state Capitol. She took a gentle but persistent approach to her activism, colleagues said.

“She was really stubborn on behalf of the people she was working for,” Sarbanes said. “She just would not stop. If one door closed, she was going to find another way.”

She poured whatever energy she had left — which appeared to be a lot — into her work environment, colleagues said. She mentored dozens of young lawyers, helping them further their careers and begin their own organizations. And when the Community Law Center ran into hard financial times, she refinanced her house and sometimes went without a paycheck to keep it afloat, friends said.

“Being a nonprofit executive director is extremely lonely, and I was so fortunate to have Anne — not only all the knowledge and skills she brought, but she really helped me feel not alone,” said Miriam Avins, who founded the land trust Baltimore Green Space.

Becky Sherblom met Blumenberg nearly three decades ago after she was named head of the Maryland Center for Community Development. They became sounding boards for one another, lamenting the sexism they faced, and developed a close friendship. They often went kayaking together.

“At critical points, she mentored me and helped me have the confidence to do a challenging job in leading a statewide nonprofit when I didn’t necessarily believe that I could do it,” Sherblom said.

Blumenberg stepped down from the center in 2005, but she privately continued her activism and community support. Some work was quiet: A gifted painter, she decorated garbage bins across the city with vibrant flowers. And some was loud: After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, she was arrested at a local protest.

She also enjoyed gardening and making pottery, and famously hosted a birthday dinner for fellow Aquarians every year. She never loved to be the center of attention — so much so that, at the end of her life, she told friends it didn’t really matter how people remembered her.

Instead, “she would want for people to know about the law center and how important organizations like a small, feisty nonprofit are to the lifeblood of our community and to the quality of life,” said Cinder Hypki, a longtime friend and former colleague.

A celebration of life is scheduled for Oct. 12 from 2 to 5 p.m. at Civic Work’s Clifton Mansion in Clifton Park.

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