NYC NOW - Midday News: New York City Beaches Remain Closed, Rat Sightings Are Declining, and Why Childcare Is Increasingly Unaffordable

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

New York City beaches will remain closed for swimming Wednesday and Thursday as Hurricane Erin generates dangerous rip currents. Plus, Mayor Adams says rat sightings in New York City have declined for eight straight months. And finally, childcare is becoming increasingly unaffordable for families. That’s why more parents in New Jersey and New York are relying on subsidized vouchers to help pay for it.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, August 20th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Mayor Adams says rat sightings in New York City have declined for eight straight months. The numbers are based on 311 data. Mayor Adams says the next step is getting more New Yorkers are on ball with containerization and into the city's quote, rat academy. He says it's all part of the progress the city is making on trash.

It's garbage to say that we can't have a cleaner city. Let's be clear on that. We can. The Department of Sanitation says crews have cleared more than 15 million pounds of litter from highways. They say residents have bought nearly 900,000 city-approved bins before new container rules next summer. It's opening day at the New York State Fair Today in Syracuse, organized to say this year's fair will showcase more animals and big-name entertainers. activities include beef cattle youth competition and ice age experience with animatronic woolly mammoths and a drone show and of course lots of food and homemade goods. The fare runs daily through Labor Day from 9 in the morning till 11 at night. Tickets are $8. New York City beaches will stay closed for swimming today and tomorrow will have no lifeguards on duty.

Hurricane Aaron in the Atlantic Ocean is making conditions too dangerous. Many New Jersey beaches are banning swimming and urging beachgoers to stay in the sand and avoid the water. The storm is not forecast to make landfall here, but it could bring 15-foot waves, strong currents to rip swimmers out to sway and beach erosion starting tonight. 70 and cloudy right now in the city, showers likely, maybe with thunderstorms late this afternoon, mostly cloudy 73 with strong winds. Stay tuned for more after the break. care is becoming increasingly unaffordable for families. That's why more parents in New Jersey and

New York are relying on subsidized vouchers to help pay for it. But while both states have boosted funding for the popular vouchers, it's still falling short of demand. And thousands of families can't get the low-cost care they need. Joining us now to discuss this. Latest is WNYC's Karen Yee. Hey, Karen, Karen, tell us who these vouchers are for and why they're running out of money. Yeah, so these are state programs that allow mostly low-income families to help pay for child care or after-school programs. Families who get a voucher sometimes have a small co-pay that's usually on a sliding scale and it depends on their income. But really, it's helped thousands of parents be able to go back to work or back to school and be able to afford child care. As you said,

child care is increasingly out of reach for many families. I mean, in New Jersey, the cost of care for an infant or toddler averages about $19,000 a year. And in New York City, most families pay between $14,000 and $20,000 a year, sometimes a lot more, for a child who's five years or younger. So if you're getting a voucher, which in New York City can be $300 a week, that's a huge help. In some cases, your co-pay is nothing or $5 to $20 a week. So these vouchers have really exploded in popularity. There's more family signing up. And in New York, the governor actually widened who would be eligible, right?

So now a family of four earning up to $108,000 a year can qualify. And the state's also increased reimbursement rates for providers. So the program is a little bit more costly to operate. That's resulted in both of these voucher programs exceeding their budgets. And now they're closing for some new families. Pardon me, Karen. Let's take New Jersey. What's the state of the voucher program in the Garden State?

So New Jersey stops taking new applications for its vouchers at the beginning of this month. So if you're a parent who just had a baby, and needs child care and are eligible, you're out of luck, even if you have an older kid who's already receiving a voucher. Enrollment is completely closed. You can't even apply. There's a sign on the website. And co-pays are also increasing for the 70,000 families on vouchers. Winifred Smith Jenkins leads early childhood policy at Advocates for Children of New Jersey. She says the freeze on new applications is leaving families scrambling to figure out what to do. Them potentially choosing between whether they work or don't work, whether they go to school or don't

go to school, whether they have to reduce work hours or come completely out of the field. It's also throwing child care providers an alert. I mean, in New Jersey, small home-based child care providers can't have more than five kids. So imagine not being able to take one or two kids because their parents can't afford the increasing costs without a voucher. That can be enough to put you out of business. Why did New Jersey close enrollment? Lawmakers did increase funding by $80 million, but there's a $30 million need that would allow another 2400 kids to get a voucher. So without that extra money, New Jersey can't accept new families. A group of lawmakers is looking to get this extra $30 million added to the budget, but it's unclear how quickly that can move or whether

there will be a special session called to get that passed. Cindy Shields represents providers as the head of the New Jersey Association for the Education of Young Children. I hope it happens soon. It's already too late. Like, we're already feeling the effects of it. Providers are already feeling effects. And families and children are seeing the effects of it. Shield says $30 million really is a drop in the bucket when you look at the state's $58 billion budget, especially when there's a surplus. Now, Karen, what's been happening in New York City? So vouchers, like I said, are state funded, and Governor Kathy Hochel agreed to boost funding for vouchers in the city, but she said the city also needed to step up. And she told the Adam's administration, you can only have this money if you also pony up your fair share.

And if the city didn't agree, it could have resulted in potentially tens of thousands of families getting kicked. off their vouchers. We talked about how the program exceeded its budget because it costs more and more families aren't signing up. But in New York City, there's an added problem, right? The city began rolling out work requirements for families receiving cash assistance. And these families, by law, have priority for the vouchers. So if you're talking about flat funding, there was a risk that families earning more could have gotten bumped off their vouchers. But ultimately, you did have historic investment by both the state and the city, and the worst of the disaster was averted. But even with this boost, the city began to waitlist newly applying families and families who are

renewing their vouchers but don't meet certain priorities, like having lower incomes or having a child with disabilities or if they're homeless. So the city told me that there's about 3,000 kids currently on the wait list. Runa Ray is a mom of three, and she lost her job as a doctor when she was pregnant. And she received a voucher for her kids since February. After some back and forth, she was ultimately able to get her voucher renewed. But she says she knows how difficult it is to deal with the uncertainty if you can't afford child care. When you have stability, you don't have to think about, like, basic things, like, is my kid going to have a safe place to be after school or, you know, during the workday?

You can think about, like, sort of higher order things, like, you know, what movie are we going to watch tonight with the kids? You have very similar scenarios playing on both sides of the Hudson here, Karen. Why did funding for these child care programs fall short? Right. I mean, in New York, the conversations over child's care. funding really arose at the 11th hour. State and local lawmakers were scrambling to get money in at the last minute, and they were

able to squeeze enough funding to save most people who were on the voucher. But like I said, there's a wait list. You know, in other parts of the state, other programs have also had to close or waitlist new applicants. In New Jersey, funding fell short by 30 million. Advocates say maybe lawmakers didn't get the message on how important this is for families, for the economy and for affordability issues as a whole. Debrae Lancaster is the executive.

director at the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. She says child care got centered really, but only for a moment during the pandemic, but historically has kind of been an invisible struggle. I think child care is historically something that unless you're in a crisis situation like World War II, that we just as a country and as a culture looked at it as something that parents need to figure out on their own. And Michael, I mean, there was so much going on during budget talks this year around potential cuts by the Trump administration to safety net programs like SNAP and Medicaid,

and child care, which in both states is a very patchwork system to navigate as a parent, kind of got left at the end of that list. Child care and nightmare there. Karen Yee covers poverty for WNYC. Karen, thank you for this. Thanks, Michael. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC.

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