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Hochul Backs Mamdani Childcare Expansion Plan With Two Years of State Funding
"New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Jan 08, 2026
Thousands of parents in New York City will have access to free childcare after Gov. Kathy Hochul joined forces with Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday to roll out the first steps of his campaign promise to make childcare universal throughout the city.
The governor announced $1.7 billion in this year's budget that will seek to create childcare access for 100,000 more children, part of a plan to spend $4.5 billion on childcare across the state during this fiscal year.
She said she is committed to “fully fund the first two years of the city’s implementation" of Mamdani's program, which he hopes will one day provide free childcare to kids between 6 weeks and 5 years old.
According to the childcare marketplace website TrustedCare, the average cost of daycare for children in New York City ranges from $2,000 to $4,200 per month, depending on the child's age and schedule.
"This is something every family can agree on," Hochul said at a press conference Thursday at a YMCA in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. "The cost of childcare is too damn high."
The governor and mayor will begin by increasing funding for the city's existing 3K program, created under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, which extended free pre-K, which was already available to all 4-year-olds, to 3-year-olds when spots are available. Hochul said she and Mamdani will seek to "fix" the program and make it truly universal.
After initially promising to make it available to all 3-year-olds, Mamdani's predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, instead slashed funding for it and other early childhood education programs, which children's advocates said drove kids out of the public school system and left many unable to find seats in nearby areas.
"We stand here today because of the young New Yorkers who were no longer willing to accept that the joy of beginning a family had to be paired with the heartbreak of moving away from a city that they have always loved," Mamdani said.
In addition to making that program universal, Hochul and Mamdani are rolling out a program offering childcare for 2-year-olds, known as "2 Care," which will first be available in "high-need areas" before being rolled out to all parents by 2029.
Mamdani has estimated that the plan to make pre-K fully universal will cost about $6 billion per year, with funding made more challenging by the fact that President Donald Trump recently cut off federal childcare subsidies to states, including $3 billion to New York, amid a manufactured panic about rampant fraud. Hochul has said the state is mulling its legal options to fight the funding freeze.
In the meantime, she plans to spend $73 million in the first year to cover the cost and creation of 2 Care, and $425 million in the second year as more children enroll.
While the source of the funds was not immediately clear, Hochul has said that money for the initial phase of the rollout will come from revenue already allocated by the legislature and not from any tax hikes in the coming year.
"We’re barely six months away from people dismissing Zohran Mamdani for running on universal childcare," said Rebecca Katz, an adviser to the new mayor's campaign. "And now here we are. Incredible. New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Some New Yorkers who supported Mamdani's campaign expressed excitement on social media about having one of their highest costs lifted.
"Universal 3K is the major reason we could afford to stay in our apartment in NYC," said Jordan Zakarin, a producer at the labor-focused media company More Perfect Union. "Making care free for 2-year-olds will be a game-changer for so many families and keep so many of them in NYC."
Andrei Berman, a father of three children, said that "this will save me 40 grand and eliminate my biggest expense a year early."
The high cost of childcare is an issue that has brought Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, together with the centrist Hochul. The endorsement of New York's "first mom governor," a leading Democratic power-broker in the state and the country, proved a critical stepping stone for Mamdani on his unlikely ascent to the city's highest office last year.
"To the cynics who insist that politics is too broken to deliver meaningful change, to those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer," Mamdani said. "This is a day that so many believed would never come, but it is a day that working people across our city have delivered through the sheer power of their hard work and their unwavering belief that a better future was within their grasp."
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'Welcome to a New Era for NYC': Zohran Mamdani Sworn In as New York City Mayor
“This is truly the honor and privilege of a lifetime," the new mayor said.
Jan 01, 2026
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City's mayor early Thursday inside an abandoned subway station, capping off the rise to power of a former state assembly member whose laser focus on affordability, willingness to challenge establishment corruption, and adept use of social media inspired the electorate—including many previous nonvoters.
Mamdani's choice of location for the swearing-in ceremony, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, symbolized his commitment to restoring a city "that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working people’s lives," the mayor said in a statement.
During his campaign, Mamdani pledged to pursue a number of ambitious changes that he and his team will now begin the work of trying to implement, from fast and free buses to a $30 minimum wage to universal childcare—an agenda that would be funded by higher taxes on large corporations and the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers.
“Happy New Year to New Yorkers both inside this tunnel and above,” Mamdani said in brief remarks at the ceremony. “This is truly the honor and privilege of a lifetime.”
This is now the official account of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Welcome to a new era for NYC. pic.twitter.com/sDyiGWUVeb
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) January 1, 2026
Much of Mamdani's agenda would require action from the city legislature. But in the weeks leading up to his swearing-in, members of Mamdani's team scoured city statutes looking for ways Mamdani could use his mayoral authority to lower prices quickly.
In an interview with Vox earlier this week, Mamdani said that enacting his agenda is "not just critically important because you’re fulfilling what animated so many to engage with the campaign, to support the campaign, but also because of the impact it can have on New Yorkers’ lives."
"There’s a lot of politics where it feels like it’s a contest around narrative, that when you win something, it’s just for the story that you can tell of what you won, but so many working people can’t feel that victory in their lives," he said. "The point of a rent freeze is you feel it every first of the month. The point of a fast and free bus is you feel it every day when you’re waiting for a bus that sometimes never comes. The point of universal child care is so that you don’t have to pay $22,500 a year for a single toddler."
Prior to Thursday's ceremony, former Democratic Mayor Eric Adams spent his final hours on a veto spree, blocking 19 bills including worker-protection legislation.
City & State reported that "among the 19 pieces of legislation that received a last-minute veto was a bill that would expand a cap on street vending licenses, a bill that aims to protect ride-hailing drivers from unjust deactivations from their apps, a bill that would prohibit federal immigration authorities from keeping an office at Rikers Island, and a bill that would grant the Civilian Complaint Review Board direct access to police body-cam footage."
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said in a statement that "Mayor Adams' last stand to steal protections from workers can’t dampen our hope for a better New York City under the leadership of Zohran Mamdani... and his pro-worker appointees, including Julie Su."
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Eric Adams Drops Out of NYC Mayor Race in Face of Trump Pressure to Stop Mamdani
"Donald Trump and his billionaire donors might be able to determine Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo's actions but they will not dictate the results of this election," Mamdani said in response to the news.
Sep 28, 2025
Following pressure to drop out of the mayoral race from the Trump administration and business leaders, current New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced on Sunday that he would end his bid to seek reelection.
Adams was running as an Independent against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also running as an Independent; Republican Curtis Sliwa; and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose victory in the Democratic primary has spooked moneyed interests and right-wing politicians including US President Donald Trump.
" Donald Trump and his billionaire donors might be able to determine Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo's actions but they will not dictate the results of this election," Mandani said in response to the news. "New York deserves better than trading in one disgraced, corrupt politician for another. On November 4, we are going to turn the page on the politics of big money and small ideas and deliver a government every New Yorker can be proud of."
Adams' term as mayor was marked by scandal. He was charged with bribery, wire fraud, and soliciting illegal campaign donations from foreign parties by the federal government in 2024 only to have the charges dropped by Trump's Department of Justice in 2025 so that Adams could focus on facilitating Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown. The incident raised concerns among New Yorkers that Adams was beholden to the president.
"Despite all we've achieved, I cannot continue my reelection campaign," Adams said in a video posted on social media Sunday. "The constant media speculation about my future and the Campaign Finance Board's decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign."
Adams had faced pressure to bow out of the race so that Cuomo would be the only centrist candidate, in a bid to hinder Mamdani's pathway to victory. His announcement comes weeks after the news broke that Trump administration officials were weighing offering jobs to Adams and Sliwa in order to boost Cuomo.
In his video, Adams did not endorse any other candidate by name, but appeared to warn against Mamdani.
“Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer [is] to destroy the very system we built over generations,” he said. “That is not change, that is chaos. Instead, I urge leaders to choose leaders not by what they promise, but by what they have delivered."
Cuomo praised Adams for his decision, saying, "I believe he is sincere in putting the well-being of New York City ahead of personal ambition. We face destructive extremist forces that would devastate our city through incompetence or ignorance, but it is not too late to stop them."
However, it is unclear how much Adams' departure will actually help Cuomo, as he was polling at less than 10% and, as the Associated Press noted, there is no guarantee that enough of his supporters would switch their allegiance to Cuomo to make a difference.
Mandani has run a popular campaign focused on lowering the cost of living in New York City, including proposals such as free busses, city-run grocery stores, and universal childcare.
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