The Space You Can’t See: Why NYC Child Care Is So Expensive—and How to Fix It

North Brooklyn has no shortage of toddlers or empty ground-floor bays. What we lack is an easy way to discover which storefronts could become childcare centers. When operators can’t find compliant community-facility space, they either pay retail rents—or stay out. That leads to tuition increases and waitlists stretching from months to years.

This piece explains why so much “childcare-eligible” space remains invisible, how rezonings enable (but don’t require) community facility (CF) space, and the simple, near-term fix: adding Community Facility and Retail filters to DOB NOW (and its API) so operators, landlords, and neighborhoods can finally match supply to demand.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: A City of Waitlists and Empty Spaces
   
   

2. The Story: One Operator’s Search
   
   

3. Primer: What “Community Facility” Actually Is (and Where Daycare Fits)
   
   

4. Rezonings Don’t Create Quotas—They Create Possibilities
   
   

5. The Money Equation: Tuition = Wages + Space
   
   

6. Data Snapshots: North Brooklyn, On the Ground
   
   

7. A No-Budget Fix: Make CF & Retail Space Searchable in DOB NOW
   
   

8. Conclusion: Seats, Sooner—And Cheaper
   
   

9. FAQ

Introduction: A City of Waitlists and Empty Spaces

Walk a few blocks in Williamsburg, Fort Greene, or Park Slope on a weekday morning and you’ll see the paradox in plain view. Parents are juggling drop-offs, nannies are hustling strollers across avenues—and a handful of ground-floor bays sit empty, papered over, waiting for the right tenant. Childcare costs have surged, infant rooms book out early, and waitlists routinely stretch across school years. Working parents need more options, yet operators are struggling to find the space to serve them.

Space is the substrate under every daycare tuition bill. It shapes where and how quickly centers can open, how much they can afford on build-outs, and—ultimately—how much families pay. New York City’s zoning code allows community facility uses (including daycare) across much of the city, sometimes with bulk/FAR advantages designed to make CF space economically feasible. But the reality is those opportunities are often invisible at street level. The data that could tell an operator, “this bay is CF-eligible, ground floor, with the right frontage” simply isn’t exposed in a searchable format.

When operators can’t find compliant CF space, they either pay competitive retail rents (passing those costs into tuition) or they avoid the submarket altogether (while waitlists continue to grow). Rezonings like Gowanus and the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use Plan have expanded the possibilities, but haven’t created a quota of required CF space. Whether those potential seats materialize hinges on discoverability—on being able to see the inventory the zoning already allows.

The Story: One Operator’s Search

Picture a seasoned daycare operator trying to open a new facility in Carroll Gardens. The model is tight but proven: 4–6 classrooms, infant through pre-K, 3,500–6,000 square feet on the ground floor, compliant egress, mechanicals that can handle infant rooms, and a street presence that reassures parents. A staffing plan and curricular materials are drafted. Family demand is not an issue.

The search starts with the usual mix of broker calls, neighborhood canvassing, and public portal searches. ZoLa shows that CF uses are permitted here, but the trail goes cold when we shift from “what’s theoretically allowed” to “what specific bays are actually viable.” DOB NOW is powerful if you already know an address, but it’s not built to surface community-facility candidates across a neighborhood or borough. There’s no public, searchable “Community Facility” filter that returns a map of prospects; no quick way to isolate ground-floor bays; no tag that says “this is Use Group 3–friendly and realistically convertible.”

Weeks turn to months while our daycare operator searches for a location. A few addresses look promising, but each one requires bespoke sleuthing: old plan sets from a broker’s Dropbox, partial filings, a landlord who “thinks it could work.” An architect’s quick take might reveal a fatal constraint (no second means of egress, a structural wall where a classroom needs to go). Meanwhile, a glossy retail space nearby is available—at a rent that only makes sense for a fashion brand. The operator faces a choice: take the retail at a premium (and push tuition higher) or step away and watch neighborhood waitlists get longer.

Multiply this story across North Brooklyn. It’s not that CF space doesn’t exist—it’s that we lack a standard, public way to find it. Without early, accurate matches, operators sign too late (or not at all), landlords can’t de-risk their financing with early educational tenants, build-outs start behind schedule, and change orders snowball. Families feel all of it—in higher bills and a lack of options.

Primer: What “Community Facility” Actually Is (and Where Daycare Fits)

New York City’s Zoning Resolution groups land uses into “Use Groups.” Community Facility uses live primarily in Use Groups 3 and 4: schools and childcare centers, libraries and museums, houses of worship, ambulatory healthcare—institutions that serve the public. The zoning tables then specify where these uses are allowed and how they can be built.

Where does daycare fit? 

For zoning purposes, daycare and early-childhood services are classified within Use Group 3—the same as “schools.” That dictates which districts you can occupy as-of-right and which bulk (size/shape) rules you must follow. In Residence (R) districts, community facility bulk is governed in one chapter; in Commercial (C) districts, it’s governed in another. Some districts and mapped overlays require attention to things like minimum lot width/area, yards and setbacks, and—where applicable—off-street parking. Separate from zoning, operators must also satisfy Building Code, Health, and FDNY requirements (for example, the occupancy and life-safety details that make infant rooms and egress planning so exacting).

Just as important is what zoning doesn’t do. The city does not set a fixed, neighborhood-level quota of CF space. Instead, zoning enables community facility floor area—often with FAR that rivals or exceeds residential in certain districts—so developers can include CF as part of a mixed-use building when it pencils. Rezonings then adjust the envelope (uses/FAR/height), and environmental review projects how much CF space is likely under those permissions. That projection is used to test impacts (schools, traffic, shadows)—but there is no mandate to build any community facility space. Whether a childcare center actually opens comes down to feasibility and matching: can an operator find the right bay, early enough, at a rent and build-out path that work?

Rezonings Don’t Create Quotas—They Create Possibilities

Zoning is a permission slip, not a purchase order. When the city rezones a neighborhood, it changes what’s allowed—the mix of uses, the amount of floor area (FAR), the height and envelope. A rezoning does not dictate a fixed quantity of “community facility” space that must be built in each micro-area.

Instead, planners run an environmental review (CEQR) using a “reasonable worst-case development scenario,” or RWCDS. This is like a forecast: given the new permissions, how much of each use is likely to show up—housing, retail, office, and community facility? The RWCDS is there to test impacts (school seats, traffic, open space, shadows), not to mandate outcomes. Developers still make case-by-case decisions based on site geometry, loan terms, anchor tenants, retail frontage, and what pencils. Sometimes CF wins because its permitted FAR is competitive with—or even better than—residential. Sometimes it doesn’t.

That distinction explains a lot of the mismatch families are feeling in Brooklyn. A plan can enable plenty of CF on paper while parents still face year-long waitlists because the discoverability step never happens. The permissions are real but there’s no path to an address.

The Money Equation: Tuition = Wages + Space

Childcare is labor, first and foremost. Mandated child-teacher ratios drive staffing, staffing drives payroll, and payroll is the largest line item in any center’s budget. But in Brooklyn—especially North Brooklyn—the other immovable object is space.

Space shows up in three ways:

1. Rent (or debt service): Ground-floor bays with frontage, second means of egress, adequate floor loading, and clean mechanical paths command a premium. If operators can’t identify community-facility candidates early, they’re pushed toward retail rents that aren’t priced for classrooms.
   
   
2. Timing costs: When discovery happens late, timelines are compressed—lease, A/E scope, DOB/DOH reviews, contractor bidding. This leads to change orders, premium labor, and suboptimal sequencing.
   
   
3. Fit-out fundamentals: Child care is MEP-heavy. Air changes for infant rooms, hot water for pantries and sanitizing, acoustic separation, and fire-rated corridors all add cost. Planned early, they’re manageable. Discovered late, they’re expensive.
   

Add those together and you get the math behind tuition: wages + space. When operators default to retail or start too late, families pay for it. Conversely, when operators can see CF-enabled space early, they sign earlier, permit earlier, and open earlier. That trims risk and brings the overall cost curve down.

Data Snapshots: North Brooklyn, On the Ground

Looking at the neighborhoods where families most want to stay put—Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, Carroll Gardens, Park Slope—a pattern emerges. Posted full-day rates often land between $2,500 and $4,300+ per month, with infant rooms at the high end. Program pages and parent advisories signal long lead times (“filled until next year,” “apply 12–18 months in advance”), particularly for infants and toddlers. The Department of Education’s 3-K/Pre-K cycles can claim citywide capacity, but neighborhood mismatches keep real families waitlisted because they can’t or won’t commute across boroughs with a stroller and a bag of bottles.

This is what invisible supply looks like from the sidewalk: premium storefronts priced for retail, CF-permissible bays that never reach the right operators, and a planning window too short to do the work cheaply. The demand is real: we need a higher supply of childcare seats.

A No-Budget Fix: Make CF & Retail Space Searchable in DOB NOW

Proof line: Give operators a CF filter and an API, and they can find space and sign earlier. Earlier signatures stabilize the landlord’s pro forma, improve loan terms, and let build-outs compete on price.

The bottleneck isn’t that zoning forbids childcare. It’s that today’s public search interface doesn’t let you search on these factors. True, if you already know an address, you can spelunk through filings. What you can’t do is query a neighborhood for likely childcare candidates: community-facility-enabled, ground-floor, right frontage, right massing. That’s the fix we need.

What to implement (administrative, not fiscal):

1. UI filters in DOB NOW
   
   
   • Community Facility (toggle)
     
     
   • Retail (toggle)
     
     
   • Ground-Floor (toggle)
     
     
   • Optional Use Group dropdown (UG3: school/childcare; UG4: other community facility)
     
     
2. API fields in the public feed
   
   
   • isCommunityFacility (boolean)
     
     
   • useGroup (enumeration, including UG3)
     
     
   • floorLevel (where derivable)
     
     
   • frontageFeet or frontageFlag (where available/standardized)
     
     
3. Backfill + pilot
   
   
   • Start with the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use corridor.
     
     
   • Tag active/new projects so results appear quickly, then phase backfill.
     
     
4. One-page data note
   
   
   • Document the fields and endpoints so coalitions, landlords, and platforms can build tools immediately.
     

Why this reduces costs and waitlists:

• Earlier deal timing: Visibility lets CF operators sign during early planning (pre-TCO), before retail bidding wars.
• Cheaper finance stack: A signed educational tenant de-risks the rent roll, often improving loan terms and unlocking landlord work (power, risers, shafts).
• Lower build-out costs: Early leases enable competitive bids and clean sequencing—fewer change orders.
  
• Right tenant, right bay: Many landlords with CF entitlements need CF tenants (think Fresh Program logic). Better matching reduces vacancy and avoids “wrong-use” retrofits.
• Economies of scale: Multi-site operators can batch fixtures/MEP orders across multiple viable sites, dropping unit costs.
  
• Neighborhood wins: Seats open closer to demand, stabilizing tuition and shortening waitlists.
  

Conclusion: Seats, Sooner—And Cheaper

Rezonings enable community facility space; they don’t require it. Whether a classroom opens on a given block depends on discoverability and timing. When childcare operators can find CF-eligible bays, they sign earlier. Earlier signatures de-risk the finance stack, which eases rents and unlocks landlord work. More time means cleaner drawings and cheaper MEP, not rush-order change-outs. Multiply that across a few dozen projects and you convert invisible potential into real seats—faster openings, shorter waitlists, steadier tuition.

We’re preparing a pilot focused on the Atlantic Avenue Mixed-Use corridor. If you’re a childcare provider, please add your name to the petition so we can demonstrate demand for a DOB NOW transparency update. If you’re a landlord with community-facility capacity, we want to hear from you—your space could be part of the pilot. And if you’re at City Hall or DOB: add the filter, and we’ll deliver the seats.

→ Sign the Petition

FAQ

What does “community facility” mean in NYC zoning?
Community Facility uses are primarily Use Groups 3 and 4 in NYC’s Zoning Resolution, including schools and childcare. They’re allowed in many Residential and Commercial districts with specific bulk rules.

Where do daycares fit in the zoning code?
Daycare is treated under Use Group 3 (school/childcare services) for zoning purposes, which determines where the use is permitted and the applicable bulk controls.

Does a rezoning require childcare space?
No. Rezonings change permissions (use, FAR, height). The City then projects likely outcomes via CEQR’s RWCDS; these are forecasts, not mandates.

How would a DOB NOW filter reduce tuition and waitlists?
Searchable Community Facility and Retail fields would let operators sign leases earlier, de-risk landlord financing, and plan cheaper build-outs—bringing seats online faster and stabilizing tuition.

What are typical daycare costs and wait times in North Brooklyn?
Many full-day programs range roughly $2,500–$4,300+ per month, with infant rooms at the high end. Demand produces long lead times; many families apply 12–18 months in advance.