New Haven pilots free housing for child care workers
With low salaries and facing high rents, many US child care workers are running out of options. A pilot program in New Haven, Connecticut could change that.
lellens
In many ways, child care is the backbone of the US economy. As child care crises during the pandemic showed, working parents need affordable, reliable, and safe child care that allows them to do their jobs to their fullest potential.
Beyond providing a service to the parents, child care also provides a benefit to the child. They learn to get along with peers, eat nutritious snacks, participate in crafts and games, and even receive some educational instruction. All of this helps set a child up for success in elementary school and beyond.
The problem is that to keep child care affordable for families, companies must pay their employees very small amounts. The average annual salary of a child care worker in the US is just below $29,000. An elementary school teacher, on the other hand, makes an average of $61,000. Elementary school teachers are also allotted benefits such as home or loan discounts that child care workers are not. As rents and other living expenses have skyrocketed in recent years, many child care workers are running out of options. Despite providing a service crucial to society, this profession--dominated by single mothers and Black women--suffers an overall low quality of life that makes it difficult for them or their children to survive, much less thrive.
To keep prices to families low while also providing a better quality of life to their employees, Friend's Center for Children, a child care center in New Haven, Connecticut is piloting a project that offers free housing to the company's child care workers. Designed by Yale architecture students, the homes each have two units and are walkable from the child care center. Though the program is only in its early phases, current recipients express profound gratitude for the situtation as well as hope for their futures. The director of the Friend's Center says she plans on continuing the pilot, and she hopes it serves as a model and as an inspiration to cities around the country who are facing a child care worker shortage that jeapordizes both the wider economy and the children who participate in child care programs each and every day.
