Planners’ Role in Expanding Child Care
Kelsey Coats, Paula Camila Diaz-Torres, Yuetong Wang, Andrew Wen, Qiuyi Yang
Tompkins County, NY is a Child Care desert, with more than three children for every available slot. This issue was exacerbated during the pandemic when Child Care providers had to maintain the same number of employees for fewer children to abide by social distancing protocols. Lack of Child Care supply and accessibility caused women to disproportionately drop out of the workforce in the past two years.
In response to this high need, Tompkins County is using their General Fund, replenished through ARPA, to increase funding for Child Care expansion. We worked with the nonprofit Child Development Council to research and write a proposal that equitably and sustainably increases supply. Our proposal consists of four initiatives with both traditional capital needs projects for Family Day Care and Child Care Center expansions, as well as innovative strategies such as a Revolving Loan Fund and strategic liaisons to offer wide technical support. As planners, we brought a diverse set of skills in project design, finance, regulatory compliance, and technical assistance to support Child Care providers and their advocates in articulating their needs to local government.
Coats, K., Diaz-Torres, P.C., Wang, Y., Wen, A., Yang, Q. (2022). Expanding Child Care in Tompkins County, NY, Issue Brief. Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University.
See Video and Slides of students' presentation at the 2022 APA Virtual National Conference
