JPMorgan Chase plans to expand Community Center program, doubling branches in low-income areas

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase will significantly expand its national “Community Center” program, the bank said Thursday, with plans to double the number of these specialized branches the bank operates particularly in low-income neighborhoods.

Along with doubling the number of Community Center branches, the bank plans to hire an additional 150 employees, known as community managers, and provide additional programming at these locations.

The Community Center program focuses on Chase opening branches in low- and moderate-income communities, particularly in areas where residents may be underbanked or unbanked. Chase opened its first Community Center in Harlem in 2019 as an experiment and the program’s success led to 19 locations in operation across the country. Jamie Dimon, the bank’s CEO, has historically attended the grand opening of nearly all the Community Centers, and their openings are typically attended by local government officials and other dignitaries.

“We are doubling down on our efforts to expand access,” said Diedra Porché, head of Chase's community and business development division.

These Community Centers are still Chase branches, but they include open areas where financial educators, local nonprofit organizations and other groups can provide financial workshops to neighborhood residents. The programs and workshops are free to the public. The bank says the locally-hired community managers who run the centers are directed not to sell products, and attendees are not required to be Chase customers or interested in Chase products.

The centers are focused on financial education, ranging from teaching a person how to build a household budget to workshops for small business owners. The bank estimates it has hosted 14,000 of these workshops since the first community center opened, with more than 1 million attendees. Chase has set a goal of increasing the programming to reach 5 million attendees.

Banks by law are required to provide services to low-income communities under the Community Reinvestment Act. But how banks provide these services can be in several different forms. While Chase does charitable giving through the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Dimon has said in the past that he believes the bank can have a greater impact in low-income communities by opening branches in those neighborhoods, creating jobs and providing financing in underserved areas.

“We try to meet people where they are, and then give them the tools and resources they might need to take their next step successfully,” Porché said.

The program is also generally good business for the bank. While there are no salespeople involved in the actual programming, the opening of a community center branch in an underserved neighborhood tends to result in new accounts being opened and new customers for the bank. Chase has issued reports in the past that show its community centers lead to higher account openings, often far more account openings than what other branches in the area provide.

FILE - Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, center right, talks with an attendee during the community branch opening in the Bronx borough of New York, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

The Florida immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” has shut down nearly a year after it was built in the Everglades, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.

DeSantis said the center was always supposed to be open for only about a year until more permanent detention centers could be secured and now federal officials have that capacity.

“It served its purpose for the time,” the Republican governor said at a news conference.

Officials announced a temporary closure of the facility earlier in June, saying hurricane season made it unsafe to keep the detainees in the Everglades. All of the people kept at the isolated airstrip had been sent to other facilities.

Immigration advocates said the tents were never safe or humane to hold people. Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers, and have described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.

The detention center was built by DeSantis’ administration in a matter of days in 2025 and President Donald Trump came to visit site.

DeSantis and Trump said the detention center was critical to Republican efforts to return people in the country illegally back to their home countries. DeSantis said 21,000 people were deported through the facility.

“There is no question this mission has made the state of Florida safer," DeSantis said.

Advocates for immigrants said closing “Alligator Alcatraz” does nothing to stop the harm of people who spend months in custody as their families suffer.

The Florida Immigrant Coalition said the only winners were corporations and contractors who profited millions of dollars as Republicans pushed an immigration emergency that does not exist.

Lawyers for the immigrants at the facility said their clients suddenly started leaving for other facilities in South Florida, California, Arizona, Louisiana and Texas earlier this month, disappearing for about a week before their attorneys and families were told where they were sent.

DeSantis said the airstrip in the Everglades the facility was built around will continue to be used.

FILE - Trucks come and go from the "Alligator Alcatraz" immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, Aug. 28, 2025, in Collier County, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)