Build universal child care as Mamdani vowed to do

Luisa wakes up before sunrise in the Bronx. She checks the day’s schedule: an infant who arrives at 6 a.m., a toddler who will stay until 7:30 p.m., a preschool child whose mother comes to pick him up after finishing his shift at the hospital. Luisa knows each family’s routines, their favorite toys, what foods their kids can’t eat, who needs an early nap, and whose grandmother calls on WhatsApp every afternoon.

This is what in-home child care in New York looks like: intimate, personal, flexible, and absolutely essential. And yet, as the city prepares to build a universal child care system, it’s the form of care most at risk of being neglected.

Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor because he spoke to the people who make New York City work: the halal cart vendors, bus drivers, delivery workers, home health aides, elderly caregivers, sanitation workers, and bodega owners. He promised a city where they can afford to stay, raise their children and prosper. If he is to make this vision a reality, the path forward starts with the kind of caregivers like Luisa.

Across the five boroughs, more than 6,000 licensed home child care (HBCC) programs serve families every day. For many New Yorkers, especially immigrants, shift workers, single parents, and those with infants and young children, HBCC is the only form of care that actually works.

Only 8% of centers offer care beyond 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. But tens of thousands of New Yorkers don’t live or work a regular office schedule. For them, the neighbor who opens at 5:30 a.m. is not a convenience; it is thanks to it that they can keep their jobs.

When we talk about building universal child care, this is where the city needs to start.

New York City does not need to build a universal child care system from scratch. HBCC programs have a capacity to serve more than 85,000 children. They are present in all neighborhoods, near all train lines and are anchored in all the cultures and languages ​​spoken here.

Despite their essential role, thousands of HBCC programs have been closed over the past decade due to low wages, unpredictable enrollment, and limited access to public funding. These small businesses operate on margins so thin that a broken refrigerator or two months of late repayments can lead to permanent closure.

If the city starts its universal child care system with HBCC, we could expand child care immediately, without the need for new buildings or new workers.

In-home child care providers are overwhelmingly women — many of them Black, brown and immigrant — who have kept the city’s children safe and learning long before “essential worker” became a common term. They care for infants and toddlers, children with special needs, and families who need flexibility, trust, and cultural connections.

Yet the people who do this work often live on the economic margins themselves.

They show up for other people’s kids, even if they don’t know how they’re going to cover their own races. They work 10, 12, 14 hour days so that someone else can keep their job, take a second shift or pursue an education.

Cities that expanded preschool without investing in home and community care learned this lesson the hard way. A school vision of universal child care cannot serve a nurse who leaves for work at 4 a.m. or a delivery person who returns home after 8 p.m. She cannot meet the needs of a home health aide whose shifts change every week. Universal child care must meet the needs of families where they are – not ask families to fit into a system that was never designed for them.

If New York wants a truly universal child care system, it must:

• Stabilize and strengthen family childcare businesses in the five boroughs.
• Compensate home educators professionally and predictably.
• Build governance structures that include HBCC providers in decision-making.
• Invest in neighborhood-focused, culturally anchored innovation.

Mamdani promised a New York that works for working people. Starting your universal child care plan with in-home child care is the most effective, fair and authentic way to keep that promise.

If New York builds its child care system on the foundations that already hold this city together, with providers like Luisa and thousands like her, then universal child care will not just be a political success. It will be a statement about what this city values ​​and who it wants to build a future for.

Jones is the CEO of ECE on the Move, an advocacy organization that supports 800 child care providers and home-based parents in New York. Renew is the executive director of Home Grown, a national collaboration working alongside 38,000 in-home child care providers to create a child care system that works for all families.