{"id":153741,"date":"2026-03-05T10:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153741\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:33:08","slug":"for-homeless-parents-a-child-care-catch-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/153741\/","title":{"rendered":"For Homeless Parents, a Child Care \u2018Catch-22\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tianna Daniels was eight months pregnant when she moved into a Staten Island family shelter last March. She had just been fired from her job as chief engineer at a Pennsylvania hotel \u2014 on the same day her doctor submitted documents to her employer for her maternity leave, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI weighed out every option \u2014 pros and cons \u2014\u00a0and I said, \u2018Yea, I\u2019m gonna go to New York and see what resources I can find,\u2019\u201d Daniels recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018This is where I was born, I got to go back.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Her son, whom she calls Papa, is now nearly 10 months old. He is taking his first steps and starting to potty-train \u2014\u00a0and is always by Daniels\u2019 side as she participates in various trainings to widen her job prospects.<\/p>\n

He watches Daniel Tiger\u2019s Neighborhood sometimes during his mother\u2019s online Occupational Safety and Health Administration classes, and sat alongside her as she trained to become an addiction recovery coach. He\u2019s even tagged along on her job interviews in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t had an hour from him since ever\u2026 I\u2019ll pull up anywhere with this kid. This kid is always with me,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cI need child care.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the 31-year-old mother sees no other option than to care for her baby on her own. The drop-in daycare center inside her shelter, for one, is still slowly moving through the city\u2019s permitting process despite being furnished two years ago. Meanwhile, she can neither bypass the long waitlist for a child-care voucher from the Administration for Children\u2019s Services (ACS) nor qualify for one from the Human Resources Administration (HRA), which would require her to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But without child care, Daniels can\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Catch-22 is so ridiculous,\u201d she said. \u201cHow am I supposed to get out of the shelter?\u201d<\/p>\n

For homeless parents, the lack of access to affordable, convenient child care is often a main barrier to transitioning into stable housing, according to a new report by WIN<\/a>, New York City\u2019s largest family shelter provider. Without it, parents struggle to work, find permanent housing, or attend crucial public benefits appointments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 15,000 New Yorkers under the age of five<\/a> live in shelters. WIN surveyed 96 parents, including Daniels, across its 16 shelters citywide and found just 31% can access ACS or HRA child-care vouchers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than half the surveyed parents said they rely on themselves for most of their child care, with 60% of them citing a lack of other child care options as the reason.<\/p>\n

The Department of Education offers some free and low-cost child care, which are competitive in some high-demand areas but chronically underfilled in others<\/a>. The open spots often require long travel for families, and many parents simply do not know about them<\/a>: Two-thirds of parents surveyed by WIN said they knew little or very little about available child care programs and resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrograms meant to offer free or reduced cost child care to low-income families were not reaching parents in shelter,\u201d the report writes, adding how traditional daycare hours \u2014 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. \u2014 make it difficult for parents to hold shift- or gig-based jobs.<\/p>\n

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, have made universal child care a core tenet of their agendas. In January, they announced $1.2 billion in state funding<\/a> to expand 3-K seats in areas with unmet demands and to launch child care for 2,000 2-year-olds this fall and another 10,000 next fall.<\/p>\n

But Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor\u2019s Office of Child Care and Early Childhood Education, said at a City Council hearing on child care Monday that the administration does not currently anticipate being able to move families off child care voucher waitlists. State dollars, she added, would go toward covering the cost of existing vouchers.<\/p>\n

Employment remains the most straightforward path out of shelters for families, according to Katie Masi, who oversees workforce development at WIN. But parents often forgo work or job training to take care of their children, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost recently I had a client who wanted to participate in a training program to get into the maintenance field, and so they found a training program that would give them the skills and the tools to connect them with employment,\u201d Masi recalled. \u201cBut they ended up having to drop out because they would have to pay out of pocket $70 a week for child care, and they couldn\u2019t get the program approved by the city as a training program so they couldn\u2019t get a voucher.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cThe biggest obstacle for our families for employment is not motivation \u2014 it is access to reliable child care that matches what they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I Was Really Doing Everything\u2019<\/p>\n

Kellice Bobbitt knows what it\u2019s like to lose a job over the lack of consistent child care.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The native New Yorker lived in Colorado for five years before returning to the city last April. There, she worked nights at FedEx while her daughters\u2019 father worked days. They\u2019d hand off their toddler before each shift, making it hard for Bobbitt to be on time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ended up getting fired because some nights I was going in a little bit late,\u201d said Bobbitt, 24, who is now separated from the father of her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n

Bobbitt\u2019s case is not an anomaly. Among the parents surveyed by WIN, 78% reported job disruptions because they could not find or afford child care \u2014 with 55% saying they\u2019d cut their own hours and 68% saying they have, like Bobbitt, lost jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those are far higher rates compared to mothers living below 200% of the poverty line, according to a 2024 Robin Hood study<\/a> referenced by the WIN report.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The WIN report concludes: \u201cParents in shelter are more likely to have experienced child care related work disruptions than their low-income peers, suggesting that the lack of child care is itself a root cause of family homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Homeless<\/p>\n

Bobbitt, for one, said she started looking for jobs in the city even before she moved back \u2014\u00a0but struggled to land a job for months between a dearth of both job opportunities and reliable child care.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was really doing everything,\u201d Bobbitt said. \u201cI have to work around my family\u2019s schedule with when they can watch the baby and when I can go out, and that was pretty hard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It took her until November \u2014 four months after moving into a WIN shelter, and two months after her daughter became eligible for in-house daycare \u2014 for her to land a job working at Sweetgreen, she said. With child care covered by WIN from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Bobbit said she\u2019s now working shifts from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. about three days a week.<\/p>\n

Other parents need child care to carve out time to attend appointments. Ilana, a 27-year-old mother who asked only to be identified by her first name, said she had been living in a car when she realized she was pregnant with her third child.<\/p>\n

Since entering a WIN shelter in September, she said, she has relied on the in-house daycare to look after her two-and-a-half-year-old, Jade, whenever she needs to attend appointments with her doctor or at HRA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had been nervous about sending Jade to daycare, she said, since she has never done so with her older daughter, who now lives with her father.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as my pregnancy progressed, it started becoming very hard to get to appointments on time and to do what I had to do to get housing \u2014\u00a0seeing that I had to get myself and my daughter ready and a lot of my appointments are early in the morning,\u201d said Ilana, who hopes to enroll Jade in the city\u2019s pre-K program next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to access free child care here in the building has tremendously changed our lives,\u201d Ilana said. \u201cI don\u2019t really have any friends \u2014 let alone friends with kids her age \u2014 so she\u2019s really not around children her age, and I feel like part of her growth is to get used to being around other kids her age and learning how to communicate and make friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

With child care in place, Ilana plans to pursue her GED after giving birth and to find a more stable job than the babysitting work she\u2019s done intermittently in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope to be able to provide a life for them where they don\u2019t end up going down the path I went on growing up or as a teen. I hope for them to just be educated,\u201d Ilana said. \u201cI know kids make mistakes, but I just hope that they learn compassion and stay on the track of success in life rather than, you know, failing or ending up like mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2019I\u2019d Be Just Fine\u2019<\/p>\n

Daniels, for her part, is juggling caring for Papa with continuing her professional training and job search. She\u2019s also grieving the fact that she\u2019s lost custody of her three older daughters to their fathers and her estranged mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I go to HRA, they always tell me, I cannot get a child care voucher unless I have an ACS case \u2014 which I don\u2019t want, which I\u2019m scared of,\u201d Daniels said. \u201cBut if I had the daycare downstairs I would be just fine \u2026 I\u2019ll be working on my mental and getting other stuff done, like taking classes and working on getting the housing situation better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a recent afternoon, she showed off photos of her daughters on her fridge and kitchen cupboards \u2014\u00a0as well as boxes of clothes ready for her daughters if they\u2019re reunited one day.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that I\u2019m so focused on Papa, all I think about is all the children,\u201d Daniels said.<\/p>\n

Bobbitt, meanwhile, has found a supportive housing rental apartment in Harlem for her and her daughter through the Department of Homeless Services \u2014 and has been packing up to prepare for a move in the next few days.<\/p>\n

She anticipates paying a quarter of her monthly income toward rent, but still isn\u2019t certain how she\u2019ll access child care after leaving the WIN shelter and its in-house daycare.<\/p>\n

She recently began applying for an HRA child care voucher, she said, but pushed back the process between finding an apartment and moving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So far, she said, she\u2019s found two daycares in the neighborhood that would each cost about $3,000 a month \u2014 an insurmountable sum on her Sweetgreen salary without a voucher.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also applied for a 3-K seat for the fall. But with months to go until then, she\u2019s considering offering her grandmother a portion of her paycheck in exchange for child care while cutting back her hours to care for her daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want her to feel comfortable in the environment she\u2019s at,\u201d Bobbitt said. \u201cI just want her to be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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