New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul said there will be free child care on Thursday morning.

The two met in Brooklyn to announce that there will be a program for 2-year-olds in the city. 

The existing 3K program will also be strengthened to achieve universal care for all families. 3K is the city’s free, full-day early childhood education program for 3-year-old children. 

“There’s one thing that every family in New York can agree on, the cost of childcare is simply too high,” Hochul said. 

The new mayor won the November 2025 election with a campaign promising to make the city more affordable for working-class residents. Part of his plans includes creating universal child care.

He wants the city to establish free, high-quality child care for children 6 weeks to 5 years old. A local law to create this was introduced to the New York City Council in 2023, but it didn’t pass.

Mamdani and Hochul previously discussed child care at a meeting in November. A representative said in a statement that they have a “shared desire to make significant additional investments that put New York on a path to universal child care.”

How much will universal child care cost NYC?

Hochul will fully fund the new program for the first two years.

Mamdani previously hadn’t said how much the program would cost, but has proposed paying for it by raising taxes on corporations and people earning more than $1 million. Those taxes must be approved by Hochul and the state Legislature.

He said the lack of child care has cost the city more than $20 billion in the last four years because of mothers leaving the workforce and families leaving the city. 

Child care too expensive for most NYC families, study says

A typical New York City daycare costs at least $20,000 a year. More than 80% of families couldn’t afford that price tag, even for one child, according to a February 2024 report. 

5BORO Institute found minority families were the most impacted, with some forced to leave the city. Researchers stated only 5% of licensed day care providers operate between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., despite 780,000 New York City parents working those hours. 

The institute’s executive director, Grace Rauh, previously told CBS News New York there was a major decline in the number of providers available due to rising costs. 

“In 2022, New York City’s estimated to have lost $23 billion in economic activity because of parents who left the workforce or had to downshift their careers to take care of children,” she said.  

More from CBS News