Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expanding NYC’s free 2-K program, adding 10,000 more seats across the city.<\/p>\n
New York’s under-five population dropped post-pandemic, spurred by high childcare and housing costs.<\/p>\n
For parents to comfortably afford childcare in New York, they need to make $300,000.<\/p>\n
As families flee cities across the country in search of more affordable housing and childcare,<\/a> New York City is angling to keep its youngest residents.<\/p>\n On Monday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that 10,000 more seats under his signature free childcare for two-year-olds program<\/a> will be covered in fall 2027. Under the expansion, all of the Bronx and Staten Island’s school districts will be eligible.<\/p>\n “For far too many New York City families, the joy of welcoming a child comes with a terrifying set of questions: How will I afford child care? Will I need to give up my job? Will I be forced to leave the city I love?” Mamdani said in a statement. “Today, for 10,000 more families, we have an answer.”<\/p>\n Those affordability questions loom large for urban parents around the country. Cities including New York have seen their under-five population fall since the onset of the pandemic.<\/p>\n Between April 2020 and July 2024, the population of children under five fell by 18% in New York City<\/a>, per an analysis from the Economic Innovation Group. That population collapsed by 15% in San Francisco, 15% in Chicago’s Cook County, and 14% in Los Angeles County over the same period. Lowering childcare costs, a key plank of Mamdani’s platform, was one area where even CEOs agreed with the socialist<\/a>.<\/p>\n In New York, families with kids under six were more than twice as likely to leave the city as families without younger children, according to a Fiscal Policy Institute analysis.<\/p>\n The share of two-year-olds in New York City’s population fell as families fled the city during the pandemic, before rebounding somewhat in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n For parents still in the city, childcare costs for toddlers in care centers reached $23,400 annually in 2024, per an analysis from the comptroller’s office. That means a New York family would have to earn at least $334,000 to pay only 7% of their family income for childcare, the federal definition of affordable.<\/p>\n The new 2-K program, which has reportedly faced implementation problems including funding and payment delays<\/a>, initially targeted a handful of districts based on economic need and childcare demand.<\/p>\n Even as providers wrangle with funding issues and the program’s rollout, children across the city recently started their first days in 2-K<\/a>. At a Friends of Crown Heights center in Brooklyn, mother Jessica Arroyo said it meant “everything” to have her daughter accepted into 2-K.<\/p>\n “I can work in peace,” Arroyo said. “She can learn, make new friends.”<\/p>\n Are you a New Yorker or childcare provider involved with 2-K? Share your story with this reporter at jkaplan@businessinsider.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n