Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul addressed the 5BORO NYC Childcare Summit in Brooklyn, highlighting the ongoing challenges families face in accessing affordable and quality childcare. Hochul called for cooperation among state, city, and private sector leaders to achieve universal childcare in New York.
During her remarks, Hochul recounted her personal experience with childcare difficulties early in her career. She said, “I probably am a poster child for the childcare crisis. All I want to do when I was younger, probably about 13 or 14 years old, and they ask you what you want to be when you grow up. My parents used to live in a trailer park and we started, we had nothing growing up for a long time. But I had this vision. I love government studies in school, and I decided someday I’m going to work in Capitol Hill. I’m going to work in that white building and I’m going to be so good. I’m going to be a staffer to a senator someday. And that’s as high as my ambition went. I’ve been making it up ever since then because I was able to achieve that at the age of 28. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan hired me as his counsel in Washington. I loved my job. I’d been waiting my whole life for this job, but I also was newly married. Little baby comes along and what does that do to my career aspirations? And I’m looking around Washington — this was quite a few years ago. Where’s the help? I had no family in the area. There were very few childcare centers. The wait lists were phenomenally long and I just didn’t have any options. And so I had to walk away from that job that I cherished and Senator Moynihan and said, ‘Come back someday. You come back any time.'”
Hochul pointed out the economic strain of childcare costs in New York City, noting that the average annual cost can range from $26,000 to $41,000, making it difficult for many families to afford care on typical salaries.
She outlined steps her administration has taken since she became governor, stating, “I decided when I first became Governor four years ago, that I was going to invest heavily in childcare. No other governor before me had even talked about it. And we took $7 billion over four years. And what we had to do was to build up the entire childcare ecosystem because it was decimated during the pandemic, decimated.” Hochul described additional investments, including $150 million for new childcare centers and $500 million toward workforce retention and training.
The governor also encouraged employers to participate in child-sponsored childcare programs, emphasizing the importance of business involvement: “We also created a child sponsored childcare program. We split the cost with employers and a lot employers have not taken us up on this. I’m going to encourage you to take a look at this. Again, I was disappointed in how few employers were looking at this. But we can’t go it alone.”
Hochul addressed the financial realities of universal childcare, explaining, “But I’m also going to tell you this, it is about $15 billion a year to do statewide, universal, everybody covered statewide, It’s about $15 billion. You know how much I have in my state reserves right now for a rainy day? $14 billion. I can’t wipe that out.”
She called on business leaders to support employees by providing on-site childcare facilities and highlighted recent agreements with companies like Micron to include such amenities as part of their operations in New York.
The governor also raised concerns about restrictive zoning laws that limit the expansion of childcare centers beyond first floors in buildings, stating her intention to work with the City Council on this issue.
Hochul concluded by stressing the need for collaboration across government, business, and academia: “We’ll be a nation leading opportunity to show what business, the private sector, as well as academia, has a role, in my opinion, they should be training more childcare workers, professionalizing, and government — because I’m there.”
The summit brought together leaders from various sectors to discuss solutions for improving access to childcare in New York City.
