In a quiet public housing community south of downtown, all eyes are glued to a projector screen, lit up with a slideshow presentation on internet safety.

“Some tips to avoid malware: Don’t click on click bait,” a teacher at the front of the room tells a class of 10 people. “(For example), if something pops up and it says, ‘you just won a free iPad or a free iPhone.’”

She’s teaching a diverse group — from an elderly man using an electric scooter to a mother soothing a crying infant in her arms. Some of them may have never owned a computer, but over the course of the morning, they learn about spyware, webpage encryption, computer security software and wireless internet networks.

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The 16-hour course is part of an effort to bring high-speed internet, computers and digital skills training to San Antonians who might otherwise not be able to access or afford them.

Roughly 1 in 4 households in San Antonio don’t have an internet subscription — the 14th worst rate in the nation for cities with 100,000 households or more, according to the Federal Reserve. In the digital era, that means they lack a basic amenity needed to apply for jobs, finish homework and access health care.

“Technology is creating more haves and have-nots,” said Jordana Barton, who oversees community development at the San Antonio branch of the Federal Reserve. “You see it in the digital divide: High-income people have access to everything — fiber-optic infrastructure, the highest speeds, all the devices. Low-income people don’t have access, and they’re told, ‘dial-up is good for you.’”

San Antonio officials are working to change that. In July 2015, former Mayor Julián Castro, then Housing and Urban Development secretary, launched ConnectHome, a partnership of the federal government, local housing authorities and the private sector to make sure families in public housing can access high-speed internet. San Antonio was chosen as one of 28 communities to be part of the program, described as Castro’s signature achievement during his time as HUD secretary.

Almost four years later, ConnectHome has expanded to dozens of communities across the nation. It varies greatly from agency to agency, but experts say San Antonio has emerged as a model — with one of the only housing authorities in the country with a full-time staffer dedicated solely to bridging the digital divide.

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“San Antonio is actually one of the leaders in the country because you have the housing authority working on this issue so intently,” said Angela Siefer, who runs the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “Very few housing authorities have one person whose job is digital inclusion.”

That person is Munirih Jester. She joined the San Antonio Housing Authority as the first ConnectHome coordinator, tasked with developing digital training for residents and finding the money to pay for it. The program is expected to operate on roughly $300,000 this year, the majority of which comes from the private sector, such as by grants from Google and Wells Fargo.

ConnectHome aims to fill a gap that no amount of cables, pipes or 5G infrastructure can — a family’s ability to pay for an internet connection and the devices needed to use it. According to SAHA, an estimated 1 in 6 San Antonio households don’t have a computer, now critical to build résumés, apply for college and participate in the economy.

Families who live in federally subsidized housing are some of the city’s most physically and financially vulnerable — typically earning $12,000 each year, in line with the federal poverty level and well below the city’s median income of $49,700. Of the 59,000 people that rely on SAHA’s programs, nearly half are children.

As of this spring, roughly 2,000 residents at 30 SAHA apartment complexes had gone through the 16-hour basic training. Of those, more than 890 earned a free computer and almost 830 received free Wi-Fi through hot spots or SAHA’s own network. They can access a slew of other educational resources across the city, including courses on online job searching, Adobe Creative Cloud, website coding and Google Docs.

“The field of digital inclusion is really social justice — it’s equity, it’s empowerment,” Jester said. “The implications of people being disconnected are going to be really detrimental.”

But Jester and her staff have only so much control of San Antonio’s digital landscape. Depending on where families live, they may not be able to access the same internet speeds as their wealthier neighbors, even if ConnectHome provides them with a free hot spot.

“We notice when we get here, especially on the South Side, there is no connectivity,” said Jester, sitting in the library of a public housing complex 5 miles south of downtown.

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Experts call that “digital redlining,” a term extended from discriminatory lending practices rampant in the 20th century when banks wouldn’t do business with residents living in communities deemed “hazardous,” areas shaded in red on maps.

Today, the map of internet speeds available in San Antonio is strikingly similar to a 1936 hand-colored map depicting neighborhoods where families were once denied financial services. Those communities were — and still are — largely made up of people of color on the South, West and East sides.

That can be particularly detrimental at a time when an estimated 70 percent of teachers assign homework that needs access to the internet, according to national experts. Last year, one study found that almost 1 in 5 U.S. teens can’t always finish their homework because of a lack of internet access at home, an academic burden that disproportionately hurts children of color and those whose parents have lower incomes.

“If our children do not have this, they will be behind the eight ball before they even start,” said Marvin Lampkins, a longtime resident of Springview, a SAHA-managed community on the East Side.

Lampkins moved into a SAHA apartment on the East Side with his wife 25 years ago after retiring from the Navy. He began taking consumer electronics classes, eventually earning a degree in computer networking. After that, SAHA hired him to help set up computer labs in a couple of public housing communities.

In 2015, when SAHA began planning ConnectHome, it wasn’t a surprise that officials asked for Lampkins’ help. Today, he’s one of four “digital ambassadors” for the program — SAHA residents who are paid part time to help run digital literacy trainings. Not only is he the go-to guy whenever neighbors run into computer problems, he’s also become an advocate for digital literacy, pushing his family and other SAHA residents to take advantage of the program.

One of his granddaughters went through the 16-hour training and received a laptop. The device has now become critical in her daily life, especially now that her 4-year-old daughter has started preschool. Her teacher uses email to communicate with parents and one day will assign homework that way, too, Lampkins said.

“Without a program like this, our poor kids are going to be left behind,” Lampkins said.

Marina Starleaf Riker is an investigative reporter for the San Antonio Express-News with extensive experience covering affordable housing, inequality and disaster recovery. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | marina.riker@express-news.net | Twitter: @MarinaStarleaf