{"id":315977,"date":"2026-08-07T11:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T11:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315977\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T11:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T11:26:10","slug":"the-costs-of-mamdanis-free-day-care-keep-getting-higher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/315977\/","title":{"rendered":"The costs of Mamdani\u2019s \u2018free\u2019 day care keep getting higher"},"content":{"rendered":"

The price New Yorkers will have to pay for Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201cfree\u201d child care<\/a> keeps growing.<\/p>\n

The latest bad news: Where the mayor\u2019s put the cost to taxpayers at $6 billion a year for universal care (for kids as young as 6 weeks), an outside estimate just came in at $9 billion.<\/p>\n

Yes, analysts with the Center for NYC Affairs estimate that it will cost 50% more than advertised<\/a> when it\u2019s fully up and running \u2014 maybe even more. <\/p>\n

This is no right-wing fearmongering: The center is affiliated with the New School, perhaps the most progressive local university. <\/p>\n

And the reasons are self-evidently true: The city will have to pay workers far more than Mamdani has estimated.<\/p>\n

Partly, that\u2019s just supply and demand: You have to pay more to tempt thousands more workers into a job that involves changing diapers and wiping butts.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Partly, realistic politics: The United Federation of Teachers aims to unionize every last day-care worker, and the UFT is wildly successful in getting its people paid more \u2014 that\u2019s a huge reason why the city now spends over $40,000 on every kid in its public schools.<\/p>\n

Of course Mamdani shrugged off the report<\/a>, mumbling that he\u2019s focused on making \u201cit easier to raise [a] family here in New York City\u201d in the long term while he\u2019s (supposedly) \u201cassessing the cost and scaling\u201d of his initiative.<\/p>\n

So far, he hasn\u2019t uttered a peep about one major cost: the way this is already making private child-care more expensive, since those centers have to match pay at the city-run competition.<\/p>\n

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Gov. Kathy Hochul, who provided the state support that let Mamdani start the project this year, also downplayed the center\u2019s report, claiming that heeding an \u201coutside study\u201d is \u201cnot how we operate\u201d and promising to have her people look into it.<\/p>\n

Sure, Kat \u2014 right after the November election, you\u2019ll think about it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s already public record that the $73 million, two-year 2,000-seat pilot program will cost taxpayers an absurd $36,500 per child, with plans to grow to 12,000 seats at a cost of $425 million, or over $35,000 per tot.<\/p>\n

Now a level-headed analysis says the bill will run 50% higher, which we calculate means more than $50,000 a head \u2014 even more bloated than the Department of Education.<\/p>\n

We get it: Finding quality, affordable child care is a major struggle for the city\u2019s working parents \u2014 but waving the socialist magic wand doesn\u2019t actually make it happen.<\/p>\n

Indeed, given the state of the city\u2019s other public services \u2014 from its terrible roads and decrepit public housing to its failure-factory public schools \u2014 parents should worry that Mamdani-care will prove every bit as low-quality as it is fundamentally unaffordable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The price New Yorkers will have to pay for Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s \u201cfree\u201d child care keeps growing. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3208,28890,304,2969,426,9,24,55,54,56,299,47350,1211,2780,82],"class_list":["post-315977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-childcare","tag-daycare","tag-editorial","tag-funding","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opinion","tag-pre-kindergarten","tag-socialism","tag-taxes","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315977","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=315977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}