Luisa wakes up before the sun rises in the Bronx. She’s checking the day’s schedule: an infant arriving at 6 a.m., a toddler who will stay until 7:30 p.m., a preschooler whose mother picks him up after finishing her hospital shift. Luisa knows every family’s routines, their favorite toys, the foods their children can’t eat, who needs a nap early, and whose grandmother calls on WhatsApp every afternoon.
This is what home-based child care looks like in New York City: intimate, personal, flexible, and absolutely essential. And yet, as the city prepares to build a universal child care system, it is the form of care most at risk of being overlooked.
Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor because he spoke to the people who make New York work: the halal cart vendors, bus drivers, delivery workers, home health aides, elder caregivers, sanitation workers, and bodega owners. He promised a city where they can afford to stay, raise their children, and thrive. If he wants to deliver on that vision, the path forward begins with the kind of care workers like Luisa provide.
Across the five boroughs, more than 6,000 licensed home-based child care (HBCC) programs serve families every day. For many New Yorkers, particularly immigrants, shift workers, single parents, and those with infants and toddlers, HBCC is the only form of care that actually works.
Only 8% of centers offer care beyond 9-5. But tens of thousands of New Yorkers don’t live or work on a regular-office schedule. For them, the neighbor who opens at 5:30 a.m. isn’t a convenience; she is the reason they can keep their job.
When we talk about building universal child care, this is the place the city must begin.
New York City doesn’t have to construct a universal child care system from scratch. HBCC programs have capacity for more than 85,000 children. They’re in every neighborhood, near every train line, and rooted in every culture and language spoken here.
Despite their essential role, thousands of HBCC programs have closed in the past decade because of low pay, unpredictable enrollment, and limited access to public funding. These small businesses operate on margins so thin that a broken refrigerator or two months of delayed reimbursement can mean shutting down for good.
If the city starts its universal child care system with HBCC, we could expand care immediately, without needing new buildings or new workers.
Home-based child care providers are overwhelmingly women — many Black, Brown, and immigrant — who have kept the city’s children safe and learning long before “essential worker” became a household term. They care for infants and toddlers, children with special needs, and families who need flexibility, trust, and cultural connection.
Yet the people who do this work often live at the economic margins themselves.
They show up for everyone else’s children even when they’re unsure how they’ll cover their own groceries. They work 10, 12, 14-hour days so someone else can keep their job, take a second shift, or pursue a degree.
Cities that have expanded pre-K without investing in home- and community-based care have learned this lesson the hard way. A school-based vision of universal child care cannot serve a nurse who leaves for work at 4 a.m. or a delivery worker returning home after 8 p.m. It cannot meet the needs of a home health aide whose shifts change weekly. Universal child care must meet families where they are — not ask families to fit into a system never designed for them.
If New York wants a child care system that is truly universal, it should:
- Stabilize and strengthen home-based child care businesses across the five boroughs.
- Pay home-based educators professionally and predictably.
- Build governance structures that include HBCC providers in decision-making.
- Invest in neighborhood-driven, culturally grounded innovation.
Mamdani promised a New York that works for working people. Beginning his universal child care plan with home-based child care is the most effective, equitable, and authentic way to deliver on that promise.
If New York builds its child care system on the foundation that already holds this city together, providers like Luisa and thousands like her, then universal child care won’t just be a policy achievement. It will be a declaration of who this city values, and who it wants to build a future for.
Jones is the CEO of ECE on the Move, an advocacy organization supporting 800 home-based child care providers and parents in New York City. Renew is the executive director of Home Grown, a national collaborative working alongside 38,000 home-based child care providers to build a child care system that works for all families.
