Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Tuesday, February 4th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: The NYPD says a burglar has been hitting nail salons and restaurants across the city stealing cash, nail supplies and frying pots. Police say it's happened 10 times at night, early morning the last two months with the burglar breaking the lock on the business's front door and making off with several hundreds of dollars in goods.

No arrest has been reported in the break ins just yet. Housing advocates say 3/4 of New Jersey's 564 towns and cities met a January 31st deadline to commit to build affordable housing in their communities. New Jersey plans to build 84,000 low priced homes over the next decade. Fair Share Housing Center director Adam Gordon says it's a big difference from the last time the state set affordable housing requirements. He says only slightly more than half the towns back then took part in the process.

Adam Gordon: I'm pleasantly surprised by it. I didn't really think we'd see an increase of this magnitude.

Michael Hill: On average, the state is requiring each town to build 150 new affordable homes by 2035, though some must build much more than that. Police are looking for a group of five people trying to steal purses from women on the Upper East Side. The NYPD says all three incidents happened on evenings last month between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and East 70th Street and 78th Street. Police say they stole a handbag with money and credit cards from a 32-year-old woman.

Police say two other women got hurt thwarting the thieves from stealing from them. 45 and partly sunny now, mostly sunny today, mid-40s. We'll notice a temperature dropping to the upper 30s by late afternoon. It'll be gusty too.

Janae Pierre: Stay close. There's more after the break.

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Announcer: NYC NOW.

Michael Hill: When Mayor Adams unveiled his 2025 priorities at his State of the City address last month, he said he wanted to make the city the best place to raise a family, but not long after WNYC and Gothamist reported the city was shutting down five early child care centers. Now candidates running against Adams are offering up their own plans to expand access to child care, seizing on the issue as a potential vulnerability in the upcoming mayoral primary. Joining us now to talk about it is WNYC's senior politics reporter Brigid Bergin. Brigid, tell us how this issue is a potential vulnerability for the mayor.

Brigid Bergin: Yes, Michael. This is an issue that is literally driving people out of New York City. Analysis by the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute found the city was leading the nation in population loss in the three years since the COVID 19 pandemic. Families with children under six are leaving at a 40% higher rate than others. This is an affordability issue that cuts across income levels. One of the parents I spoke with for this story was Stephanie Park, mom of two.

Her story is one that I think a lot of families can probably relate to. She lives in Brooklyn. Her oldest did not initially get a spot in the city's 3K program last year. Between child care for that daughter and an infant daughter at a relatively inexpensive local Brownstone Daycare, this is what they were going to be paying.

Stephanie Park: We were looking at paying $59,000 for the year for child care for two kids, which is insane. That is money that could be going towards a deposit on an apartment. It's money that my household could be using to pay down student loans to be saving in our kids 529 accounts.

Brigid Bergin: Now, this happened to Park while she was on maternity leave getting ready to return to a job in financial services. Her husband also works in Fintech. That kind of a cost was out of reach for them. She said that she assumes that that's a kind of cost that would be probably out of reach for a lot of parents. This drove her to volunteer with a group called New Yorkers United for Child Care. They've been really fighting to protect those early childhood education seats that were part of last year and seemingly this year's budget dance. They're really pushing lawmakers to think about universal child care in a program called 2-Care that would be available to the city's two year olds.

Michael Hill: Where do proposals like that fit with mayoral candidates? What are they proposing?

Brigid Bergin: There is definitely growing support among the Democrats challenging Mayor Adams for new ways to provide families with expanded child care options. State Senator Jessica Ramos has been a supporter of universal child care and talks about how she was part of the de Blasio administration when early childhood education was a key priority.

State Senator Jessica Ramos: I was there when we did universal pre-K. I know the intra-agency effort that goes into actually carrying out the execution of a system that works for parents, for children, and for early childhood educators.

Brigid Bergin: She wants to see those current seats protected and really the program expanded to reach kids going backwards. Two-year-olds would be next. Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani also supports a universal child care plan for kids six weeks to five years old. He wants it to be a benefit available to all New Yorkers that would really mean scaling up current investments by billions. He estimates it would be at least 5 billion in city funds, along with state and federal investments. Supporters of expanded child care investment point to the return for the city's economy if we were to do that.

Michael Hill: That's a lot of money. Do any of the candidates have different approaches to this?

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Former Comptroller Scott Stringer released a child care plan that would cap any of a family's investment to more than 7% of their income, and for lower-income families, it would be free, but he is much more cautious around the word universal when talking about child care.

Former Comptroller Scott Stringer: Universal is a great word until you have to pay for it. Any legislator who has a proposal for universal child care and who could bring home the bacon, then we'll certainly expand the program.

Brigid Bergin: Now, Stringer has also proposed longer school days and after-school programs that would be available to all, but again, his proposal includes a new way to fund these activities that he's called the New York City Trishare Child Care Fund, which is modeled after a similar program in Michigan. The fund would include city, state, and federal investments, employer investments, and then payments from families as the final component and the families that could afford it.

Of course, those employers would be incentivized to participate through tax breaks. Then there's State Senator Zellnor Myrie, who is focused on providing universal after school programming to all students across the city. He has really talked about how essential it was for him growing up, and he really wants to make it a priority for all families going forward. At the same time, he's also fighting for some of those early child care seats that the city has proposed slashing.

Michael Hill: Brigid, you've reported on the upcoming closures of five child care centers. How does the fight for those sites fit into this debate?

Brigid Bergin: One of those sites is that's losing its lease, Friends of Crown Heights is in Myrie's district, and he joined a large protest outside another facility, Nuestros Niños in Williamsburg, just over a week ago. There are two other sites in Brooklyn, another in Queens. In all of these cases, Michael, the city said it was not renewing the lease it holds for the space that these organizations use to run their early childhood programs, which effectively eliminates their programs next year.

The city has said the enrollment is down in these programs, but City Comptroller Brad Lander held a press conference to protest these sudden closures and framed the impact like this.

City Comptroller Brad Lander: Let's be clear, closing those five centers, cutting this money from universal pre-k, from 3k and from special education early childhood services would mean that something north of 10,000 families who have child care this year would not have it next year.

Brigid Bergin: Now Michael, I also reported that three of these centers are actually owed millions of dollars from the city in back payments, but a glimmer of good news right after that story ran about a week ago Friday, the city paid one of those sites, Nuestros Niños, about $130,000 of what they were owed, but nothing has changed yet in terms of making those sites available to families next year.

Michael Hill: How is the mayor responding to all of this?

Brigid Bergin: The mayor spent most of last week holed up in Gracie Mansion, as we know, but when he emerged on Thursday in a speech, he said he had reduced the cost of child care from $55 a week to $5 a week. Just to be clear, that is a reference to low-income families who qualify for child care subsidies, which is a very small number compared to the total number of families that need child care. Advocates even say those subsid are cumbersome, they're not reaching everyone who needs it. We are in the midst of budget season. Again at the city and state level, opponents are quick to point out that the mayor's preliminary budget does include cuts for early childhood education seats on top of those five centers I've mentioned. You can expect this issue to remain one where Adams is targeted by his challengers.

Michael Hill: Brigid, you can certainly see how this issue will likely drive some votes, even in the mayoral primary. WNYC's Brigid Bergin. You can read more of Brigid's report on this issue that's on our website, Gothamist. Brigid, thank you very much for this.

Brigid Bergin: Thank you.

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Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC NOW from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this evening.

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