{"id":100848,"date":"2026-01-15T05:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100848\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T05:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T05:01:07","slug":"nys-quest-for-universal-child-care-sounds-enticing-but-reality-is-simply-unrealistic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100848\/","title":{"rendered":"NY’s quest for universal child care sounds enticing \u2014 but reality is simply unrealistic"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York\u2019s push for universal child care<\/a> starts from a place most people understand, but making it a reality is a daunting challenge.<\/p>\n

Yes, child care is expensive. Families are stretched.<\/p>\n

Many parents want to work more but can\u2019t find care that fits their schedules or budgets.<\/p>\n

The idea that the city or state should step in is an easy sell.<\/p>\n

Even under optimistic assumptions, however, a fully universal child-care system would cost more than $14 billion a year<\/a>, permanently added to the state budget.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani\u2019s supporters argue that shifting the cost to government would make New York more livable for families with young children, while creating new day-care jobs.<\/p>\n

State can\u2019t deliver<\/p>\n

But that assumes the state can actually deliver licensed care at a huge scale to hundreds of thousands of kids.<\/p>\n

Right now it can\u2019t. The city doesn\u2019t have enough facilities or workers to provide full-day care for every infant, toddler and preschooler \u2014 and building that capacity will take years.<\/p>\n

But Mamdani\u2019s plans<\/a> don\u2019t just call for setting up more regulated child-care centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will also subsidize child care at home for families who prefer a trusted neighbor or relative to take care of their child,\u201d Mamdani promised last year in a campaign video.<\/p>\n

Who wouldn\u2019t want that kind of flexibility? In theory, it would allow families to choose care that fits their lives, instead of forcing them into rigid systems that don\u2019t yet exist at scale.<\/p>\n

Yet that\u00a0 also gives the government unprecedented reach into people\u2019s homes \u2014 while opening the door to all kinds of fraud.<\/p>\n

Care provided in private homes is extremely hard to verify, and easy to rip off.<\/p>\n

Any system that pays relatives must rely heavily on self-reporting: hours claimed, care provided, necessity asserted.<\/p>\n

There is no practical way to confirm whether care was actually provided, how much of it occurred, or whether multiple adults are being paid for the same child.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

New York has already seen how such trust-based systems operate \u2014 and how they can fail miserably.<\/p>\n

Just look at the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, which pays family members to care for elderly or dis\u00adabled relatives at home.<\/p>\n

CDPAP was created for both humane reasons and as a cheaper alternative to institutional care.<\/p>\n

But its reliance on self-reporting and private settings has made it difficult to oversee, leaving the state struggling with widespread waste, fraud and mismanagement.<\/p>\n

Just last week, The Post reported that CDPAP lost more than $1 billion<\/a> to middlemen and theft over the last decade.<\/p>\n

Child care would be even harder to oversee.<\/p>\n

The prospect of paying family caregivers also raises numerous practical questions: Are caregivers employees or contractors? Who handles payroll taxes? How are hours tracked?<\/p>\n

None of this means families don\u2019t need help \u2014 they do. And flexibility matters.<\/p>\n

No clear rules<\/p>\n

But flexibility without clear rules creates systems the state cannot realistically govern.<\/p>\n

And a top-down state subsidy will leave families increasingly dependent on the government.<\/p>\n

There are other alternatives.<\/p>\n

If Mamdani and Gov. Hochul<\/a> want to support families with children, they could put more agency in the hands of parents with tax credits.<\/p>\n

That way, families can choose the care arrangements that work best for them \u2014 without becoming addicted to government handouts.<\/p>\n

Universality built on informal, hard-to-police arrangements risks repeating mistakes this state is still trying to fix.<\/p>\n

Liena Zagare is editor of the Manhattan Institute\u2019s Bigger Apple Newsletter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York\u2019s push for universal child care starts from a place most people understand, but making it a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3208,4207,426,9,11,10,49,51,50,299,4281,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-100848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-childcare","9":"tag-children","10":"tag-kathy-hochul","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-opinion","18":"tag-state-budget","19":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}