NYC to launch pilot for universal child care as part of $116B budget deal

New York City will start a pilot program to provide free child care for children ages 2 and under for hundreds of low-income families as part of a $116 billion budget deal between the City Council and Mayor Eric Adams,

“This is a major step forward for our city and our working class families,” Adams said during a press conference on Friday with City Council leaders at City Hall.

The initiative comes as presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani has made free universal childcare a key platform of his campaign. The cost of child care is widely seen as a leading driver of New York City’s affordability crisis, and was a central issue in the primary race.

This year’s budget was negotiated days after Tuesday’s historic primary election. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is term-limited, finished fourth in the race after the first-round tally of votes. The mayor is opting to run as an independent in the general election, but he faces a difficult path amid low approval ratings and the stain of a corruption case that was dismissed at the request of Trump administration officials.

The speaker and mayor have repeatedly clashed over the budget. On Friday, she criticized the mayor for his previous budget cuts, which she said forced the Council to fight to reinstate funding every year.

“I have repeatedly insisted on our need to move away from a budget of restoration to one that strengthens investment in New Yorkers,” she said.

Other key items included in the 2026 budget include $42 million in legal assistance for migrants, and $12.5 million for migrant children who arrived without their parents or legal guardians. As Gothamist previously reported, an increasing number of migrant children are appearing before immigration judges without legal representation. The Trump administration in March canceled a $200 million contract that funds legal services for unaccompanied children.

In a significant policy win for the mayor, the city will allocate $6 million to create a new Division of Sustainable Delivery to regulate e-bikes. The mayor has proposed a 15 mph speed limit on e-bikes. But enforcement of that plan requires a new agency to work with the app-based delivery companies like UberEats and Doordash to come up with a set of rules that ensure delivery workers are not penalized for longer delivery times.

The city will also increase funding for libraries to allow 10 more branches to open on Sundays.

As part of the child care proposal, the city would fund $10 million for a program that would serve hundreds of low-income families. It would be run by the Department of Education and complement Head Start, a federally funded program that provides free child care to roughly 34,000 children from low-income families. Head Start is among the many services seen as vulnerable to budget cuts by President Donald Trump.

The pilot program represents an early step toward making New York City the first city in the nation to provide free universal child care for new parents. A report by the Fiscal Policy Institute released last year found families with children aged 6 or younger are twice as likely to leave the city as those without children.

The Council initially proposed creating 3,500 free child care seats for children under 3. That plan would have involved vouchers administered by the Administration for Children’s Services. But the agency is currently retooling a program that issues vouchers to around 80,000 low-income families and was not seen as best suited to launch the new pilot, according to someone involved in negotiations.

The speaker recently wrote about the importance of affordable child care in a City & State opinion piece she co-authored with Kellan Calder, a member of New Yorkers United for Childcare.

“Protecting the future of New York means we have to make it possible for families to stay here, and affordable child care is foundational to these efforts,” they wrote.

In April, Mayor Adams pitched an “afterschool for all” plan as part of his proposed budget. That proposal echoed one from state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who was running in the Democratic primary. The mayor formally kicked off his run for reelection as an independent on Thursday.

This story has been updated with more information.