Community Op-Ed: Moving Closer to Affordable Child Care for NYC Families

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Our city’s child care costs rank among the highest in the nation, so every New Yorker knows a family member, a friend, or a colleague who has struggled to afford child care. From the earliest days of our administration, we have made affordable child care a priority and have said again and again that working-class New York City families should not have to choose between child care and putting food on the table.

Now, we are making our city more family friendly by launching New York City’s first-ever Municipal Child Care Pilot Program. The program will provide affordable child care for employees of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services — right where they work. We are achieving this by turning underutilized city-owned space into on-site, free child care centers for our workers. So even as they are doing their own jobs, city employees will know that their children are nearby, well looked after, and safe. The program will begin in September 2026, and — along with another $10-million investment we made in a groundbreaking pilot program to provide free child care for children from low-income families aged two and under — more quickly puts our city on the path to universal child care.

City employees are the engine that keeps our city moving: cleaning our streets, teaching our children, and keeping us safe. With this program, we are giving back to some of these New Yorkers who do so much for us. This $10-million investment also means city employees can have work-family balance, making a crucial difference — especially for working mothers.

We know that when mothers leave the workforce to care for a child, they forgo $145,000 in earnings throughout their lifetime on average. If parents are forced to leave the workforce, families struggle, and our economy is weakened. I saw the struggle first-hand: my mother couldn’t afford child care even though she worked three jobs just to put food on the table for her six kids and keep a roof over our heads. So, my sister had to help raise me and my siblings because the city was not there to help us when we needed it.

I am proud to say that our Municipal Child Care Pilot Program builds on the work we have already done to help put more money back into the pockets of municipal employees and make child care more affordable for all New Yorkers.

This work includes wiping out $360 million in student loan debt for 100,000 of our hard-working public servants, and investing $70 million in our “Best Budget Ever” towards supporting pre-K special education students who require occupational therapy, speech therapy, and other related services.

We have also worked to make child care funding permanent in our city budget by adding $170 million more into early childhood education. This allows critical programs like pre-K special education and the expansion of our citywide 3-K program to be supported into the future.

Additionally, we have driven down the cost of subsidized child care by over 90 percent since we came into office. Thanks to our efforts, a family earning $55,000 a year went from spending $55 a week on child care in 2022 to just $4.80 a week today.

In New York, we know it takes a city to raise a child, and with these investments we are not only making our city more affordable but making it the best place to find opportunity, raise a family, and live the American Dream.