Louisville wins $3 million to help people gain job skills and financial security

JPMorgan Chase is expected to announce early Thursday that Louisville is one of five U.S. communities to win its first AdvancingCities Challenge, an award of $3 million to expand job skills and financial literacy during the next three years.

The $15 million investment in five cities aims to tackle entrenched economic disparities and fuel innovative approaches to target alarming — and increasing — economic disparities.

Chicago, Miami, San Diego and Syracuse, New York, are being singled out for their proposals in addition to Louisville, which assembled a plan involving several local groups targeting residents in six of the city's lowest income neighborhoods.

"What really jumped out at us about Louisville's plan ... was the number of people they're touching. It's deep community engagement," Irene Baker, head of the banking and investment firm's AdvancingCities initiative, told the Courier Journal before the announcement.

JPMorgan Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon is expected to join city leaders and heads of the groups at a 10:30 a.m. announcement Thursday at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage in western Louisville.

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Dimon also was scheduled to meet privately at the Omni Hotel downtown with a number of the bank's 460 local employees. The bank has 35 branches in the region.

JPMorgan, with Dimon as the chief cheerleader, asserts that American growth and prosperity are seriously threatened by the widening income gap and barriers to higher paying jobs in low-income communities. It's committed to spending $500 million over five years to support creative solutions to tackle the problems in hopes some of the best models can be duplicated in other cities.

"We don't want to continue to leave people behind," said Theresa Reno-Weber, executive director of Metro United Way of Louisville.

The group teamed with Goodwill Industries of Kentucky, KentuckianaWorks, Russell: A Place of Promise, Catholic Charities, and other organizations working in low-income neighborhoods to put together an extensive proposal called Louisville Digital Inclusion and Economic Resilience. The University of Louisville will audit results from the project.

Reno-Weber said she was driving a few weeks ago when JPMorgan executives called her to say Louisville had won. "I was dancing in my seat," she said.

The plans include having Kentuckiana Works use about $300,000 to create Tech Louisville, a program modeled on Code Louisville coding classes. About 100 students annually would take online courses and attend weekly classes to earn three credentials in IT help desk and network support skills free of charge.

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Students completing the courses would also get linked to local jobs, which pay $35,000 to $55,000, said Michael Gritton, executive director of Kentuckiana Works, the region's workforce and training agency.

"There's a clear market demand, and you can work your way up into other jobs" and degree programs, Gritton said.

The financial literacy effort draws on parts of a current project called AcceLOUrate Savings, funded by the Humana Foundation, where coaching and one-on-one sessions with clients help people reach financial goals.

The kind of work envisioned for the JPMorgan grant was on display Tuesday when Joi Boyd, a coach, met with Lecia Nolan, a 61-year-old grandmother who lives in public housing in the Park Hill neighborhood. She hopes to buy a house someday, after living in rentals since age 15. 

In a lively give-and-take inside a meeting room at the Mabel Wiggins Center on Algonquin Parkway, Nolan recounted how she'd had a few payments bounce at the bank the other day. She'd racked up $65 in overdraft charges.

"Did they mail you a bank statement?" Boyd asked. "We'll go through it and look at the bounces."

At one point, Boyd grimaced as Nolan ticked through her challenging day, starting with the surprises in her bank account. "You weren't prepared for all that," she said sympathetically.

Boyd said before the session that people she sees struggle with the basics. "Even though they are working, they don't have good money management" habits, so part of the challenge is helping people navigate banking and to establish and rebuild credit. More than anything, teaching clients to separate wants from needs with money.

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The one-on-one sessions are an example the groups' plans for the JPMorgan funding. Meeting people where they are, without judgment is key, Reno-Weber said. 

Portland, Russell, Smoketown, Phoenix Hill, Shelby Park and the south-central area around Churchill Downs are the areas selected, although the programs will be open to residents across the community.

The target neighborhoods were identified in the Greater Louisville Project’s 2015 Poverty Report, which found the median household earnings was $18,000, compared with Louisville’s average of $31,000.

More than 60% of residents from the areas are considered low income, compared with an average of 26.2% in neighborhoods across the city.

The poverty report estimated that if the 55,000 residents in these neighborhoods could achieve citywide averages for health, jobs, income and educational attainment, the city would see $377 million in additional earnings per year and 6,200 more employed people.

"We're talking about changing deeply ingrained behaviors," JPMorgan's Baker said. It's "giving people the skills so when they walk out of the room, they're changing behaviors."

Grace Schneider: 502-582-4082; gschneider@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @gesinfk. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/graces.