For public housing resident Wanda Marte, losing city subsidized childcare at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea would mean parting with a service that gives her a fighting chance to get ahead.
“I don’t know what I would do,” Marte said recently at the nonprofit on W. 26th St. “It’s very good to have a place like this. It gives us parents an opportunity to go work and have a better life.”
Marte, 38, moved into the Elliott-Chelsea Houses next to the center — and a short walk from trendy cafes and galleries — in March after a year in a shelter.
Now, the program she depends on for childcare, and many others like it across the city, are imperiled by proposed cuts — simply because the providers are located in predominantly wealthy areas.
An analysis from United Neighborhood Houses released to the Daily News shows the Bloomberg administration is determining which nonprofits should get childcare funding based largely on a zip code’s affluence.
“In the absence of (budget) money, they are having to come up with these bizarre schemes,” said Nancy Wackstein, the advocacy group’s executive director.
Her organization said the cuts will mean the loss of 47,000 slots for children in childcare and after-school programs.
The Administration for Children’s Services, which funds subsidized daycare, created targeted and nontargeted zip codes based on income and other factors, officials said.
ACS Commissioner Ronald Richter noted that 82% of the money for childcare will be distributed in the areas his agency defined as targeted.
“In a community like Chelsea, where there may be a couple of hundred eligible children, we as the government agency responsible for allocating limited resources have to look at it in comparison to another area where there may be thousands of eligible children,” Richter said.
The agency will lose between 8,000 – 9,000 daycare seats in October, a spokesman said, and another 7,700 children who receive vouchers for services will lose funding.
“The fact that there are people who live in 6,000-square-foot lofts overlooking the High Line is essentially eliminating services for children who live in public housing a block away,” Ken Jockers, Hudson Guild’s executive director, said.
Department of Youth and Community Development spokeswoman Cathleen Collins said the agency would be using 70% of its after-school funding in zip codes it determines have more needy residents.
The number of spots available to children in city-subsidized after-school programs could drop by nearly half — from 53,000 in July 2012 to about 29,000 in July 2013, her office said.
“These cuts they’re proposing would be devastating,” City Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn) said. “I represent some zip codes that have a high income, but have pockets of poverty.”
tmoore@nydailynews.com
