November 2022 City of San Diego Measure H: It’s For the Children (And Their Parents)

Anybody with kids knows just how bad the childcare crisis has become locally. One step that could be taken to ease the problem is on the November ballot, namely Measure H.

It’s not controversial or obviously expensive. However, this solution has a steep hill to climb, mostly because apathy could cause voters to overlook its importance. 

People have dropped out of the workforce because of the scarcity and cost of having somebody to mind the little ones. Full-time care for an infant can run from $12,000 up to $26,000, depending on the locale and facility. Even at the bottom end of the scale that’s an impossible amount of money for someone making minimum wage ($31,200).

Pre pandemic there was only enough licensed care locally for 40% of families with two working parents or a single parent who works. The YMCA of San Diego County, which serves as the region’s resource and referral system for childcare, estimates that about 10% of the existing licensed facilities shuttered over the past couple of years. And thousands of below-the-radar slots also went away.

From Voice of San Diego:

• The patchwork that was San Diego’s childcare infrastructure before COVID-19 already was full of holes. Childcare centers were barely making ends meet. Workers were unsatisfied with poverty wages and families struggled to find care. The Workforce Partnership tried to raise the alarm about how bad the system had gotten and the impacts it would have on workforce readiness and the health and prosperity of the region. Advocacy on the topic got more organized.  

• San Diego for Every Child, a coalition of groups that got together to address childhood poverty, became increasingly vocal on the lack of access to professional childcare. 

• Then COVID-19 broke that already teetering system.  

Cognizant of the crisis, the City of San Diego –urged on by council members Chris Cate and Raul Campillo– began to look around for properties it owned that might be suitable for childcare facilities. 

From Times of San Diego:

• According to a report by the San Diego Workforce Partnership, 70% of San Diego families with children have all parents in the household working. The report also found that a San Diego family with two children and living on a median income can spend up to 40% of their monthly budget on child care.

• “San Diegans are in dire need of child care and, since the city has the ability to house these services, we believe it’s important we get involved,” said Lucy Contreras, deputy director in the city’s Department of Real Estate and Airport Management. “This Request for Information is essential in making sure we understand what is needed to ensure potential future child care operators will create practical and safe facilities.”

Seventy two sites, consisting of 18 libraries, 12 office buildings and 42 parks and recreation facilities were cataloged. However, city charter section 55 requires parkland to be used for park or recreation purposes unless voters say otherwise. Childcare is not currently a park or recreation use.

Measure H would allow, but not require, the City Manager to authorize childcare in recreational facilities and buildings on dedicated parkland. This would include state-licensed childcare facilities in which non medical care and supervision is provided for children under age 18 in a group setting for less than 24 hours per day. 

It would not permit educational or instructional use provided by public, private, home, or charter schools, nor does it authorize the construction of new buildings on dedicated parkland solely for childcare.

There is no formal opposition to Measure H at present. Trust me on this when I say a NIMBY-driven faction will emerge yelling at kids to stay out of their neighborhood/off their lawn. 

Lack of empathy has become a defining characteristic for a significant part of the population, and under-the-radar measures are easy to kill with a few well placed scare stories, especially when voters are deluged with high cost ads advocating for one choice or another for online gambling..

Having facilities is just one part of the solution. Human beings are also needed, and childcare workers are already in short supply and are all-too-often underpaid.

From KPBS:

• The pay is almost universally low for child care workers in America—the majority of whom are women of color. On average in California, preschool teachers make less than half of what kindergarten teachers make. And more than a third of child care workers live below the federal poverty line.

• People who run child care in their home also make the equivalent of $11 an hour, according to one study.

• “We're asking so much for $12 an hour when you could be making more at McDonald's or Starbucks or Target, where you don't have to have to do such an emotionally demanding job,” said Caitlin McLean with the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. “If we want to make sure that families have access to these services, we have to make sure that this is a good job that people want to do. And we have not been doing that.”

Much of what’s considered ‘normal’ in the child-care industry is rooted in racism and sexism.,    

Here’s Dion Aroner, a former Democratic state legislator from the San Francisco Bay Area who first tried to unionize child-care workers in 2003, quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

• “This is about the undervaluing of services that these women of color provide based in a system that goes back 400 years, when Black women took care of white babies when they were in slavery,” she said. “I don’t want to say nothing has changed, because that’s not fair, but the basics of who is doing the care, and the blatant lack of respect, hasn’t changed.”

Measure H needs your support. It’s not a hot-button issue, unless you happen to have kids, and lots of people will pass it by on the ballot. 

Beyond that, the question of how society’s essential service workers including healthcare, education, sanitation, and childcare are paid has to be addressed. There are no “market solutions” and the small government crowd seems content with poverty as a given for occupations not centered in self-interest or increases in market share.

The Biden administration programs cut by Congress in the name of getting something over nothing were chock full of pathways to progress in this area. If Democrats can emerge from the midterm elections with expanded executive and legislative majorities on every level, the possibilities for doing more are there.   

Measure H - Ballot Title, Summary, and Impartial Analysis

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Next Up– CA Proposition One: It’s About More Than Abortion 

Previous voter guides:
(More coming soon)

California State Officials
California’s DC Delegation
State Senate races
State Assembly Races
SD County Supervisors
County Sheriff, Assessor, and Treasurer Races
SD Measure B: Cash Meets Trash 
SD Measure C: Reach for the Sky! Or Else?
SD Measure D: Righting a Wrong to Build a Future

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Boards of Education Contests:
Analysis by Thomas Ultican

2022 School Board Contests, Part 1
The County Board, San Diego Unified, Sweetwater Union, Poway Unified
2022 School Board Contests, Part 2
Chula Vista, San Marcos, Vista, Grossmont

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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com