Title: Keeping Families in the City

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. New York City has long been a magnet for young professionals, we all know that, but keeping them here once they start families has become a growing challenge. Between 2020 and 2023, and I realize those were pandemic years, the number of children under 5 in New York City dropped by over 18%, a much steeper decline than the national average. Families cite high housing costs, limited childcare options, and concerns about education as top reasons for leaving, and it is a longer-term trend too, this predates the pandemic.

To address this, the Center for an Urban Future, a New York-based think tank focused on economic mobility and reducing inequality, has released a new report, it's called 5 Ideas for Retaining New York City's Young Families. It lays out five actionable proposals aimed at making the city more livable for families, including expanding access to childcare, creating more affordable family-sized housing, and improving middle schools. We'll go down the whole list of five. I'll bring up some others that came up in another segment earlier this week that are actually kind of different from theirs. Joining us to discuss is Eli Dvorkin, the Center for an Urban Future's editorial and policy director and co-author of the report. Eli, welcome to WNYC. Thanks for coming up.

Eli Dvorkin: Thank you so much, Brian. It's such a pleasure to be with you. Happy spring.

Brian: Happy spring to you. Was it five o'clock this morning, or is it five o'clock this evening? Do you know?

Eli: I think your colleague Michael Hill told me, I think it was 5:01 this morning.

Brian: How about that? This is the day when the amount of sunlight hours and the amount of darkness are as equal as they're going to get, at least in our area. Let's start with the basics. Who's leaving New York City and why? What do we know about the families making these decisions?

Eli: Thanks, Brian. Maybe we could just start for a second with where we are today as a city. I think in a lot of ways, New York City has come roaring back from the pandemic. Industries have recovered, many of them have. Restaurants and parks are full. You see it when you walk the streets, and the city is attracting more young people than ever. NYU received 120,000-plus applications for this coming fall. That's more than any other private US university.

The number of New Yorkers 18 to 21 has actually increased since 2021, even as the city's total population has not. That's all some good news for New York, but you're absolutely right, Brian, we've got a problem here. We're losing families with young kids at an alarming rate. You mentioned some of the top-line stats, losing more children under five than San Francisco, LA, Chicago, any of our other peer cities. In particular, families with young kids are leaving at twice the rate of other households, and that's a major concern if we want to build a strong and thriving New York City for the long term.

Brian: How pandemic era related, if at all?

Eli: I think you brought up a good point earlier, Brian, which is this is a trend that predates the pandemic. The pandemic just accelerated it, made it worse. We already had a structural imbalance in our population. We benefited from immigration, helping to really drive almost all of the city's population growth over the years. At the same time, even before COVID, we were losing young families. That accelerated significantly. We saw similar trends in other cities, but in New York, it was even steeper, 18.3% decline from 20 to 23.

We're starting to see some moderation of those trends. Things are returning in some ways to the pre-pandemic mean, but the pre-pandemic normal was also one in which we were losing families. This is a long-standing challenge. It's just gotten tougher over the past few years and it hasn't abated.

Brian: Before we get to your five proposed policies for retaining families with kids in New York City, let me ask you, why do we care? Friend of mine yesterday, knowing we were going to do this segment, said to me, "This maybe the wrong policy priority, keeping young families in the city." Their argument was, why make neighborhoods uglier and mass transit more overcrowded by adding more tall buildings everywhere just to accommodate more and more population?

New York has long had around 8 million people and it's hard enough to live here. Do we really want 9 million, 10 million, 11 million people, and all the apartment buildings and infrastructure that it would take to house them? What would you say to that skeptic friend of mine who just heard our promo yesterday [chuckles] saying we were going to have you on? If that person is listening, what would you say to them?

Eli: I'd start by saying, look, when families stay, they invest in New York City in ways that benefit everyone. Families, and in particular, I think young families are more likely to vote at a time when we're experiencing dwindling civic engagement. The New Yorkers are doing the most, I think, to help foster stronger school communities that benefits all students. Ideally, they see themselves staying, committing to New York, putting down roots and investing for the long term. Not just their money, but their time, their focus, their attention, that benefits local commercial corridors and small businesses.

It helps boost advocacy for parks and culture. I think young families really contribute a lot to the city's civic life, but moreover contribute to creating a New York that actually works better for everyone. We've got a real challenge for an economy over time. If we lose all of the 20-somethings that come to New York or grow up here, go to college, get a CUNY degree, they're the ones who are bright-eyed and excited about building a future here.

If we lose those New Yorkers as they age into their 30s and decide to start families, we're losing a critical part of our economy. We're losing some of the folks that are best positioned to help pay the taxes that support services that benefit everyone. We've got a big challenge, I think, as a city if we can't hold on to more of our 20-somethings as they decide to put down roots and invest in building a life here.

Brian: All right. We're going to go down the list of your five ideas for retaining young families in New York in just a minute. Then I'm going to throw some other ones on the fire that came up on the show earlier this week that you don't mention and ask you if they are competitive with yours or if they would enhance yours. Listeners, we want to open up the phones, and we invite you to tell us your story, this new report highlighting why so many families are leaving New York, soaring housing costs, childcare shortages, school concerns, and they lay out these five ideas to turn things around. You don't need to hear them first.

Tell us your story. Have you considered leaving the city for reasons relating to childcare, housing, 3K or pre-K schools as the kids get a little older, parks, anything else? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. This is also going to be the reader question in our Brian Lehrer Show newsletter this week, and it will be interesting to see what other responses come in in the next few days.

For now, call in on the air and tell us what would it take for New York City to truly be a place where you don't have to ask whether your family can stay and thrive. 212-433-WNYC. Or if you've already moved with your young kids but you still listen to the show, tell us why you left. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text for Eli Dvorkin from the Center for an Urban Future. All right. Your idea number one, public-private childcare partnerships, public-private childcare partnerships. What are those?

Eli: Let me just say, when we started this project, undertook this report which we developed in partnership with Fisher Brothers Foundation and real thought partnership with Winston Fisher, we wanted to identify some ideas that were achievable, Brian, looking at ideas that could be done by the city without having to see intervention from the state, and that could be done quickly, or things that could be done almost right away. This is one that jumped out at me as we considered our options because there is such an opportunity to make it much easier for New York City's private sector to get involved with boosting the supply of childcare.

There's a lot that needs to be done when it comes to expanding childcare. I'd like to see the state of New York embrace childcare as an essential public good like K-12 education. We also need to see opportunities to much better leverage the business community in New York to help solve a problem that directly affects them. It's their workforce. It's the possibility, potential for a future labor force that includes more working parents. It's a major cause of stress and strain on families to get to work, to maintain their employment when they're constantly struggling with childcare costs and availability.

We propose an idea, we call it the Childcare Partnership Fund, that's actually modeled on a pretty innovative idea from Iowa of all places. We like to think in New York that if we haven't thought of it here, it can't be a great idea. There's some really innovative things that have been piloted or attempted in other places that we could still learn from in New York, and this is one of them.

In Iowa, they leveraged public dollars to bring on many, many more private-sector dollars that would be focused on closing very specific childcare gaps. The way that it worked is that partner organizations, nonprofits, the Iowa Women's Foundation, they coordinated an effort to fund a public match, a public sector put in money, and they worked with business leaders, including major employers, but also small businesses, trade associations, business improvement districts, chambers of commerce, to create a fund that would focus on, in their case, really boosting childcare wages.

In Iowa at least, they found that that was the most achievable route toward boosting supply, helping existing childcare providers increase the wages that they could offer. They were able to hire more workers and open up more slots, and it worked in Iowa. Iowa's seen, just since that pilot program launched a couple of years ago, a 12% increase in the availability of childcare seats in the counties that participated in the program. It's worked so well that they're actually in the process of scaling it up across the whole state of Iowa.

We think there's a lot of things that would help with our childcare crisis in New York. The average New Yorkers spending over $21,000 a year on infant care in particular. I would recommend for the city to consider doing this more than just potentially offering opportunities for existing providers to boost wages, but things like low or no-interest loans for childcare facility development, making it easier for new buildings to include turnkey childcare-ready spaces, investing in strengthening pathways into the childcare workforce, and yes, definitely boosting wages is part of that. We've got some very big physical gaps in New York. 14% of the city's neighborhoods are effectively childcare deserts.

Brian: The stat that you have is really shocking. One of those things that you could say shocking, but not surprising about how little childcare workers in the city make, you have it as a median salary of just $25,000. People ask sometimes, what if we value childcare more than software development and we paid the childcare workers what the software developers get and we paid the software developers what the childcare workers get? Would humanity be better off? Of course, that's not where the market is, but because you're proposing both a pay increase and a lot of new slots being paid for at least partly, at least largely by the city government, have you costed it out? What would this cost per year?

Eli: Brian, I think that's part of why I think this idea has some real potential, because it ultimately would be a strategy to get the private sector to contribute to solving for some of our childcare gaps. I don't think this can achieve childcare for all at scale. I think it can make a real dent, though, where we have some of our biggest needs, or more to the point, it can help existing providers scale up and where they have excess space capacity, but not enough staff that can help add seats. I think that's a sustainable option for those providers, because ultimately, if they're able to get over that initial hump of attracting and retaining their workforce, they could potentially have a greater capacity and sustain it over time.

To your specific point about how much this has cost, we're proposing that the city would start with a relatively modest outlet, we say $25 million in the report, with the idea being that it would be a match, it would be a smart way to spend city dollars to actually bring in private sector funding. I have seen a lot of ideas out there, some of them good ideas around what the city can do, and especially what the state could do more of to support boosting the supply of childcare and addressing the workforce shortages. I think this is an idea that stands out because it's actually a strategy to use some public funding to get a lot more money on board from the private sector.

Brian: We spent a lot of time on your idea, number one, and I think it was worth it because I think this idea is probably the most important. You could tell me if you agree or if you want to rank your ideas at all, but just to make sure we get them all in, I'm going to read the whole list of five for our listeners.

Number one was spark public-private childcare partnerships. Number two, create or free up 10,000 three-bedroom units of affordable housing for families. Three, make 3K and pre-K truly universal by using AI-powered data tools to reach every child. Four, scale up NYC parks, summer day camps to serve 5,000 children. Five, revamp the city's struggling middle school system by creating new, smaller schools and investing in innovative leadership. Pick anyone to go into in some detail.

Eli: Sure. Thanks, Brian. Let me try to move a little quickly through at least one more. Let's talk a little bit about family-sized housing. We have an idea here to create or free up 10,000 units that are the right size for a family, three-bedroom units. We found in our research, there's really a market failure here, Brian. Over the past decade, the city's only added 6,250 new three-plus-bedroom units out of more than 191,000. Those are built-in projects that received at least some city financing. That's just over 3%.

When we talked to developers, they said, "Look, there's a reason for this. We get a premium for those smaller units. We're charging 5% or more extra per square foot for studios and one-bedrooms. It's easier to fit more of them into the small floor plates that really exist for a lot of new construction in New York." We're not building enough family-sized units with the market as is. We think there's some smart things the city could do to change that.

For instance, a small tweak to what was a promising set of zoning amendments, the City of Yes plan, but that would specifically create a density bonus for larger units, which just aren't being built, especially affordable units, or in particular, affordable units. We have another idea there, too, which is, look, we found that there are over 72,000 older New Yorkers right now who are living alone in three-plus-bedroom homes.

We think even a fraction, frankly, if the city could help even 10% of those folks with incentivization through offering subsidies for moving assistance and navigation support for the housing market, if even 10% of those folks could be helped into right-sizing their living environments into smaller units, that would actually free up more three-bedroom housing than the city has built in a decade. We think there's a lot that the city could do there around actually boosting the availability of apartments that are the right size for a growing family.

Brian: Let's take some phone calls. Alexandra in Ridgefield, Connecticut, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alexandra.

Alexandra: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm so glad you're doing this segment because this is very much us right now. My husband and I are lifelong Brooklynites. I went to NYU, lived in Brooklyn for the last 15 years. We have two little kiddos, two-year-old and four-year-old. As our second one was born, we absolutely could not afford to live in New York. We did not want to leave, but we had to leave, and we moved to Connecticut. It was interesting because as I was listening to this segment, I thought about all the families and friends I knew who stayed in Brooklyn. There's five families that I thought of, and every single one of them has generational family [inaudible 00:16:36]

Brian: Oh, boy. You're breaking up terribly. I'll give you one more shot to stabilize your phone and finish your thought. Sorry, but give it a shot.

Alexandra: Oh, sorry. I'm not sure if you heard me, but I think [crossalk]

Brian: I heard the beginning.

Alexandra: Oh, you heard the beginning. Okay. I think what's interesting is that when I thought about my friends who stayed in Brooklyn, the only ones who could stay with families are lots of generational families, so grandparents that were helping them. It was five separate families that I thought of. Meanwhile--

Brian: Alexandra, we'll leave it there because of the phone quality, but I did get her last point, which is the five families she knew in Brooklyn who didn't feel like they had

to move out when they had kids, had intergenerational wealth, were being helped by the grandparents of the kids. We're going to let that story sit there and go to David in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, David.

David: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a thought when, Brian, you mentioned your friend didn't know why this was important to do, and I heard the answer from your guest. I just was thinking about the people that are moving out are probably not, at least in my experience, like myself, a working-class, can't afford to move out. The people that are being attracted, or at least I didn't hear that in his answer, that there's so many folks who don't have that choice to move out. Then I was wondering about gentrification when it comes to who exactly are you bringing in or interested in bringing in?

Brian: That's such a great point. David, I'm going to leave it there for time, but that's a great question because I think it goes to a general conception, Eli, that a lot of people have, I guess including David, that I think you want to flip on its head, which is that the people who are leaving New York are the wealthier people who can, as David puts it, afford to leave New York. Governor Hochul just the other day was talking about no tax hikes in her new budget for the wealthiest New Yorkers because she wants to keep them here so they keep the tax base strong. When you look at who's really leaving, who's really leaving?

Eli: I certainly hear that a lot as well, but I would say what David is saying was true in 2020. That's when we really saw a significant exodus of the highest-earning New Yorkers. For the city's economy's sake, it's actually some good news there. Many of those folks did come back to the city. What we've seen since then in 2021 and 2022, 2023, and as you alluded to earlier, Brian, the trend before the pandemic as well is that we're actually losing our working and middle-class families. That's who's been leaving the city.

It's been as true in neighborhoods like central Brooklyn and southeastern Queens as it is in parts of the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. It's really been a challenge that cuts across the working, I think, and middle class spectra of the city. It's really not just an issue that we see with the folks who have the most resources leaving. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's working in middle-class families, a pretty broad mix who are going to not just upstate or other nearby states like Connecticut, but are moving to North Carolina and the Mid-South

and places where the cost of living is much cheaper.

Those families are disproportionately likely to be Black families before the pandemic. It's been true since 2021 as well. It really is a mix of folks who are leaving. I think the one thing they have in common is that they're young families, they've got kids under six, and they just can't figure out how to make it work here anymore.

Brian: I think we had a separate story on Gothamist recently about how it's middle-income New Yorkers who are leaving, families making maybe between $50,000 and $110,000 a year. You can tell me if I'm remembering that right. As you were starting to indicate, it's a lot of white families and a lot of Black families leaving New York, right?

Eli: Yes, that's all correct, Brian. I think the numbers you shared are accurate, and it really gives you a sense of we're talking about a pretty broad swath of what we think of as middle-class New York and folks who are living paycheck to paycheck. They're not in poverty, they may feel in some ways very privileged, very fortunate, but at the end of the month, there's nothing left, and folks feel that squeeze really acutely. It's enough to make people really want to consider an option that feels less painful every month. Often that means leaving not just the city, but the state.

Brian: Let me take through some callers here and get some short stories, and then we'll talk about the group. Sina in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sina, right to your point.

Sina: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I read somewhere that they wanted to make room for bigger families. They wanted to have seniors that have two and three-bedroom apartments to vacate those and move to smaller studio and one-bedroom apartments to make room for larger families. I think I read that in the paper. I don't know if it was HUD [crosstalk]

Brian: That's in your report, isn't it, Eli?

Eli: Yes, that's right. We're talking about a program that would help to incentivize some folks living in those larger apartments to be able to move to a smaller unit.

Brian: Sina, you like that idea?

Sina: [inaudible 00:22:18] [chuckles]

Brian: Thank you very much. I think she likes that idea. Audrey in Brooklyn, a grandma in one of these families. Hi, Audrey. You're on WNYC.

Audrey: Hi. Good morning. How are you?

Brian: Good.

Audrey: Both my daughters are leaving the city. One has left and one is leaving. One's a teacher, one's a writer. Childcare was impossible. My daughter, who's a writer, went to visit a daycare that was affordable but difficult affordability-wise and was the closest to where she lives in Flatbush, Brooklyn. It was not safe, it was not clean. They came home from the visit and said, "We're leaving New York." The subway is scary to her. She was with the baby on the subway and someone almost attacked her and that didn't help at all. It's really sad. They're tiny, these babies, and I feel like I have to leave myself now to be near them.

Brian: Aw, Audrey, thank you very much. One more in the set. Eddie in Bayside, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eddie.

Eddie: How are you doing? I don't know if people are aware of this City of Yes that is being implemented by our great Governor Hochul, who is in the pockets of the big real estate and construction companies. It's basically a plan to remove all one and two-family buildings in the outer borough, say in Bayside or Whitestone, and ruin those neighborhoods by putting multi- big apartment buildings in those areas and over-congesting the areas.

Brian: Eddie, thank you very much. Let's take Eddie first there, Eli, the accusation aside that Hochul is in the pocket of big real estate. That is how a lot of people see this, who live in low-rise communities like Bayside, and that is that the government wants to force density on their neighborhoods. One of the arguments is, who really profits from this? Maybe there'll be more three-bedroom apartments or whatever for more young families, but who else is really behind this? It's big real estate.

Eli: Look, respectfully, Eddie, I have to disagree. I think ultimately the numbers bear out the reality of the situation. We are in a housing crisis. We have rental vacancy rates that have been slipped down to just over 1%. We are living in a city where housing supply is so constrained that costs have skyrocketed accordingly and that New Yorkers from all walks of life just can't afford to live here anymore.

I understand that there's very specific neighborhood-level concerns, and that's part of the process that has to play out. It did play out in city council. There were amendments and changes to City of Yes that changed some of the requirements. They kept parking requirements in many neighborhoods and other things, but at the end of the day, I really believe that the city cannot thrive economically, cannot prosper if we don't build a whole lot more housing than we have today. That's going to require, I think, most if not all neighborhoods to contribute to that increase in supply.

I think the purpose of City of Yes was just a little bit more housing everywhere, not giant new developments everywhere, but just a little bit more. Frankly, from the perspective of the city's long-term health, there's probably no issue that's more important than making sure that we're actually finally turning the tide on decades of undersupply when it comes to housing.

Brian: To Audrey's call, citing not just the economic pressures on her kids and their young families, but also public safety, I want to ask you about that and a couple of other things that are not on your list. On Tuesday's show, we had the journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, who wrote a new book called Abundance. I don't know if you've read it, but one of their main interests is also affordable housing for families in New York and other major cities. Their solutions were different from yours, at least what they wanted to emphasize.

They said they are liberal politically, but that some liberal policies have gone too far unnecessarily making housing here unaffordable. Zoning was a big one. I think City of Yes takes that on to some degree. Also what they call the regulatory slowdown of the American construction industry. They say studies show it's not the cost or government involvement or unions that create the disparity in affordability of housing between New York and, let's say, some red states. Safety regulations, budget regulations, bidding on projects, it all amounts

to a mountain of paperwork, they write.

Mayor Adams, and now Andrew Cuomo, would say public safety is the first and foremost thing to keep people here, and these authors are talking about regulations, as well as zoning, making construction difficult much more in New York than a lot of other places in the country that don't have the affordable housing shortage and the reluctance to build. I'm curious if you and them are on different tracks or did you just focus on some but you also embraced those?

Eli: I think maybe it's more the latter, Brian. Certainly, public safety is critically important. It's not an area where I'm an expert. I look to folks that really follow the data, and I've certainly seen since the depths of the pandemic that some of those trends have been going the right direction and we still have some big challenges, including things like felony assault. I'll leave it to the folks that really know those issues the best to talk about how do we make meaningful and lasting and equitable progress around public safety.

In terms of Ezra and Derek, who I respect immensely, I think they make a lot of really important points. It's not dissimilar to what I was saying about City of Yes, which is it's been so difficult, so politically difficult to even make modest zoning changes that will allow a little bit more housing. I saw in my own neighborhood in Queens real resistance to the idea of accessory dwelling units at a time when we've got an older adult population that's grown by 33% in a decade. The pushback was that somehow that was going to compromise the integrity of our neighborhoods.

I think we've got a lot of work to do as a city to create the conditions for what Ezra and Derek are talking about to be realized, including making a really good-faith effort to show New Yorkers why getting behind a growth agenda for housing is good for them, is good for everyone. That has to address some real concerns about affordability levels. It has to look at opportunities for affordable homeownership, has to be coupled with some smart investments in public spaces and public transit.

Maybe I'm just a hopeless optimist. I think those changes are not only possible, but are so necessary that they have to happen in the years ahead. I think City of Yes is a stein that points in the right direction, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done there. I would agree with a lot of what Derek and Ezra are putting forward. I think the challenge is now for policymakers in New York City to really bring New Yorkers on board with more of the work that's needed to get behind smart agenda to grow our housing supply.

Brian: 30 seconds. If the city doesn't take action on these issues, what do you see as the long term economic and social fabric consequences?

Eli: I really believe that our young families are the future of the health and well-being of our economy. We do have a rapidly aging population. We've got to do more to care for older New Yorkers, help them age in place. We've got a lot of challenges when it comes to the youngest New Yorkers ensuring that everybody has a strong start and equitable start in life. If we don't do more to hold on to our young families, we really hollow out our neighborhoods from within.

We see the consequences for local economic activity for tax base and for the civic engagement that's so critically important to making a New York that works better for everyone. I'd like to see, and I think I do see, growing consensus that this is a major challenge. What we're hoping we can contribute with this report is five achievable ideas to make some progress on.

Brian: Derek and Ezra added that the innovative industries and innovation has powered New York for so many decades, for centuries. They want to locate where the workers are. If young adults beyond their single years, middle-life adults with children at home, those ages aren't here to be part of the workforce, the innovative companies of the future are going to go somewhere else.

Eli: There's definitely a risk of that. I think that's why we believe there's a growing appetite for employers to get behind investments in childcare, why there's a growing consensus that what New York's economy needs to thrive is housing and investments in parks and culture and transit, the things that really make New York livable for everybody. That's the economic development strategy that's been working for New York for decades, but we've got some big threats out there right now, some big challenges to what's made New York tick for so many years. We got to make some real headway in reversing those trends and helping make New York City feel and really, in fact, be a city where young families can thrive.

Brian: Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, with 5 Ideas for Retaining New York City's Young Families. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Eli: Thanks so much, Brian. Really a pleasure.

 

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