Louisa wakes up before sunrise in the Bronx. She checks the day’s schedule: an infant arriving at 6 a.m., a toddler staying until 7:30 p.m., a preschooler being picked up by his mother after finishing her shift at the hospital. Luisa knows each family’s routine, their favorite toys, the foods their kids can’t eat, who needs an early nap, and whose grandmother calls via WhatsApp every afternoon.
This is what in-home child care in New York City looks like: intimate, personal, flexible, and absolutely essential. However, as the city prepares to build a comprehensive child care system, this is the form of care most at risk of being overlooked.
Zahran Mamdani was elected mayor because he spoke to the people who make New York work: halal cart vendors, bus drivers, delivery workers, home health aides, elder care providers, janitors, and store owners. He promised a city where they could afford to live, raise their children, and prosper. If he wants to realize this vision, the way forward starts with the kind of care workers like Louisa.
Across the five boroughs, more than 6,000 Licensed Home Child Care (HBCC) Programs that 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 provide care after 9-5. But tens of thousands of New Yorkers don’t live or work with a regular office schedule. For them, a neighbor who opens at 5:30 a.m. is not convenient; It’s the reason they keep their jobs.
When we talk about building universal child care, this is where the city needs to start.
New York City does not have to create a comprehensive child care system from scratch. HBCC programs have the capacity to accommodate more than 85,000 children. They are in every neighborhood, near every train line, and ingrained in every culture and language spoken here.
Despite their essential role, thousands of HBCC programs have closed in the past decade due to low wages, unpredictability of school enrollment, and limited access to public funding. These small businesses operate on razor-thin margins, so much so that a broken refrigerator or a two-month delay in payment could mean they close permanently.
If the city started its own comprehensive system of care for children with HCC, we could expand 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 city children safe and learning long before “essential worker” became a household term. They care for infants, toddlers, children with special needs, and families who need flexibility, confidence, and cultural connection.
However, the people who do this work often live on the economic margins themselves.
They show up for everyone’s kids even when they’re not sure how to cover their groceries. They work 10, 12, or 14 hours a day so that someone else can keep their job, work a second shift, or get a college degree.
Cities that expanded pre-K without investing in home and community-based care have learned this lesson the hard way. The school vision of comprehensive pediatric care cannot serve the nurse who leaves for work at 4 a.m. or the delivery person who returns home after 8 p.m., nor can it meet the needs of a home health aide whose shifts change weekly. Comprehensive child care should meet 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 welfare system, it must:
- Stabilize and strengthen home-based child care businesses throughout the five boroughs.
- Pay home tutors in a professional and predictable manner.
- Build governance structures that include HBCC providers in the decision-making process.
- Invest in environmentally and culturally based innovation.
Mamdani promised a New York that worked for workers. Starting your comprehensive child care plan with in-home child care is the most effective, fair, and authentic way to deliver on this promise.
If New York builds its child care system on the foundation that already holds this city together, and providers like Louisa and thousands like her, universal child care will be more than just a political achievement. It will serve as a declaration of who this city values, and who it wants to build a future for.
Jones is the CEO of the company ECE on the movean advocacy organization that supports 800 child care providers and at-home parents in New York City. Renewal is the CEO of Home growna national collaborative that works alongside 38,000 in-home child care providers to build a child care system that works for all families.