My current tenants in the house I lived in for 12 years in the East Bay started a large in-home daycare there. I was so thrilled! Finally all the troubles I had faced desperately seeking a quality childcare option for my kids would at least be solved for the next neighbors with young families. However, the neighbors didn’t see it that way. They wrote me all sorts of nasty-grams telling me I was “driving down their property values” by “allowing” my tenants to do this (P.S. even if I wasn’t happy about it, the law says you can’t stop tenants from opening an in-home day care where they live). The classist, racist, ethnophobic rants were very similar to all the regular NIMBY talking points (traffic, people will be “casing” the neighborhood when dropping off their kids, crime, theft). All this when we weren't even constructing anything new!! I’m glad the law protects them and in-home daycares don’t need to go through planning commission processes, or city council approval, but we can’t continue to live this way where alarmist mobs can stop, or try to stop, construction of daycares. There is a childcare crisis (mom of a 4 year old talking here) and we need to address it.
One of the worst planning meetings I ever attended was a hearing in an upscale resort town at which wealthy condo owners lined up to complain about the sounds of children playing. And won.
Daycare that meets state licensing requirements should be a use-by-right in all zoning districts except truly heavy industrial.
Great and necessary article. I was aware of this 50 years ago when I needed childcare and there were no school or city provided child care facilities in Lafayette. Now there are both but they are both expensive and insufficient.
The federal government is trying to add work requirements to health and other support services. This makes no sense when child care is both too expensive and not available.
Other “advanced” societies provide free and quality child care which benefits all. Money spent on good childcare and pre-school education is much cheaper, more humane and better for all, than our mass incarceration - which is by far the highest in so called “advanced” societies.
“Child care, not prisons” is a good slogan we shouldn’t have to say! I hadn’t thought of the childcare shortage in terms of Republicans’ obsession with work requirements but that’s a very important point—very cruel to force people to work when there’s so little support for the childcare they need
This is a great piece. I have been at those same meetings, have heard the arguments from individuals that the sound of children playing is unacceptable. But, we know it's not about the supposed noise from other people. It's about the other people.
Oh how well I know this problem! Back in 2025, I was leading an effort by LePort Montessori Schools to open a high-quality Montessori preschool in Montclair, Oakland.
We were shut down by neighborhood protests and threats of CEQA lawsuits.
140 high quality childcare spots not built, because of NIMBY opposition.
Our proposed location was ideal (or so we thought!): right near an elementary school, so parents could do preschool & elementary drop-off at the same time. Quite near to a high way on-ramp, so no traffic going through neighborhoods, and parents being able to drop kids off on their way to work. We proposed detailed traffic plans, including “drive-by drop-off” which we had already implemented along Market Street in SF for our SF school, and staggered drop-off times.
We bent over backwards to appease the NIMBYs. They prevailed—in a neighborhood were parents go on preschool waitlists when they are pregnant!
The laws just have to change to make this anti-family vetocracy impossible.
My current tenants in the house I lived in for 12 years in the East Bay started a large in-home daycare there. I was so thrilled! Finally all the troubles I had faced desperately seeking a quality childcare option for my kids would at least be solved for the next neighbors with young families. However, the neighbors didn’t see it that way. They wrote me all sorts of nasty-grams telling me I was “driving down their property values” by “allowing” my tenants to do this (P.S. even if I wasn’t happy about it, the law says you can’t stop tenants from opening an in-home day care where they live). The classist, racist, ethnophobic rants were very similar to all the regular NIMBY talking points (traffic, people will be “casing” the neighborhood when dropping off their kids, crime, theft). All this when we weren't even constructing anything new!! I’m glad the law protects them and in-home daycares don’t need to go through planning commission processes, or city council approval, but we can’t continue to live this way where alarmist mobs can stop, or try to stop, construction of daycares. There is a childcare crisis (mom of a 4 year old talking here) and we need to address it.
One of the worst planning meetings I ever attended was a hearing in an upscale resort town at which wealthy condo owners lined up to complain about the sounds of children playing. And won.
Daycare that meets state licensing requirements should be a use-by-right in all zoning districts except truly heavy industrial.
And then there should be some version of this Vermont program: https://dcf.vermont.gov/benefits/ccfap
Insane. You’d think condo owners of all people would understand bad permitting, but maybe not in a resort town
Love the Vermont program, thank you for sharing!
Great and necessary article. I was aware of this 50 years ago when I needed childcare and there were no school or city provided child care facilities in Lafayette. Now there are both but they are both expensive and insufficient.
The federal government is trying to add work requirements to health and other support services. This makes no sense when child care is both too expensive and not available.
Other “advanced” societies provide free and quality child care which benefits all. Money spent on good childcare and pre-school education is much cheaper, more humane and better for all, than our mass incarceration - which is by far the highest in so called “advanced” societies.
“Child care, not prisons” is a good slogan we shouldn’t have to say! I hadn’t thought of the childcare shortage in terms of Republicans’ obsession with work requirements but that’s a very important point—very cruel to force people to work when there’s so little support for the childcare they need
This is a great piece. I have been at those same meetings, have heard the arguments from individuals that the sound of children playing is unacceptable. But, we know it's not about the supposed noise from other people. It's about the other people.
Oh how well I know this problem! Back in 2025, I was leading an effort by LePort Montessori Schools to open a high-quality Montessori preschool in Montclair, Oakland.
We were shut down by neighborhood protests and threats of CEQA lawsuits.
140 high quality childcare spots not built, because of NIMBY opposition.
Our proposed location was ideal (or so we thought!): right near an elementary school, so parents could do preschool & elementary drop-off at the same time. Quite near to a high way on-ramp, so no traffic going through neighborhoods, and parents being able to drop kids off on their way to work. We proposed detailed traffic plans, including “drive-by drop-off” which we had already implemented along Market Street in SF for our SF school, and staggered drop-off times.
We bent over backwards to appease the NIMBYs. They prevailed—in a neighborhood were parents go on preschool waitlists when they are pregnant!
The laws just have to change to make this anti-family vetocracy impossible.
Link to a hopeful article from when we still thought we would open this preschool: https://www.mercurynews.com/2015/05/20/after-nearly-100-years-montclair-womens-cultural-arts-club-closing/