How Mayor-elect Mamdani can turn his universal child care promise into immediate relief and long-term infrastructure for working families
One big thing
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faces the political challenge of turning his ambitious universal child care promise into reality. While his campaign projected a $6 billion universal care system — similar in spirit to Quebec’s model — the immediate priority for a progressive administration should be structural groundwork that relieves families now and builds durable systems. Policy research suggests a powerful first step: clearing existing child care subsidy waitlists to deliver meaningful coverage while laying foundational infrastructure for a truly universal program, as outlined by the Center for New York City Affairs.
Immediate implementation through existing structures
New York City’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) already serves tens of thousands of children but has a backlog of approximately 10,000 income-eligible families waiting for subsidies due to underfunding and bureaucratic dissonance between city and state funding commitments. Clearing this waitlist with roughly $155 million in targeted funding would provide *virtually free care* to these families without waiting for a fully developed universal care bureaucracy. This is a politically savvy first step: it immediately demonstrates progress and builds public confidence while honoring Mamdani’s campaign promise to address inequities in care access.
Boosting care providers and feminist policy objectives
This approach also aligns with a feminist economic strategy that recognizes care work as labor deserving of dignity and support. Many licensed family child care providers operate under precarious conditions, particularly immigrant women and women of color, who earn low wages despite providing indispensable services. Clearing the CCAP backlog would infuse revenue into these networks and stabilize small home-based care economies, allowing providers to thrive as part of the care infrastructure rather than remain marginal or underpaid laborers.
From incremental to universal
Clearing the CCAP waitlist is administratively feasible because it leverages existing systems, requiring no new legislation or massive bureaucracy from scratch. Once this immediate problem is addressed, policymakers can pursue expansion phases. For example, a phased conversion of CCAP into a citywide universal system over several years — building on its current service to over 73,000 children daily — would create a sustainable ladder to full universality. This staged framework not only minimizes disruption but uses real data on service capacity and costs to guide budget planning and revenue design.
Broader insights for inclusive policy
Policy advocates emphasize that this approach must be paired with progressive revenue streams, such as higher taxes on corporations and high earners — measures Mamdani campaigned on — to fund expanded care equitably and sustainably. It also signals a shift in how social services are understood: from patchwork fixes to *universal infrastructure that empowers working families*, reduces gendered labor burdens, and bolsters economic participation. A universal child care system is not just a public service but a feminist intervention into economic life.
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