Access to affordable, high quality child care is vital to a child’s health and well-being, a family’s financial stability, and a community’s economic resiliency. Child care allows parents to remain in the workforce and contribute to their local economy with the confidence that their children are receiving first-rate care and developmental support. Local businesses also benefit from child care, as it enables them to retain top talent.

Despite its importance, quality child care options remain out of reach for many communities across the State of Michigan and around the country. In Michigan alone, 44% of families live in a child care desert – a census tract with more than 50 children under age five that contains either no child care providers or so few options that there are more than three times as many children as licensed child care slots. Other families will need to spend 15.7% of their income on child care costs, making child care largely cost prohibitive.

While the lack of child care is a complex, systems-wide problem, local regulations, plans, and policies can inadvertently create barriers for the expansion of child care businesses. Fortunately, municipalities have the immediate ability to promote local child care readiness through minor updates to planning and zoning policies. Here are our top 3 ways to get started:

1. Understand your community’s child care needs: Using census data, seek out the current and projected number of infant children and young families in your community, and compare that with the supply of child care facilities available. Analyze the location of child care facilities to land-uses and public transit routes to assess their convenience and accessibility. Notice any gaps? These are opportunities for action!

2. Audit your Zoning Ordinance for child care barriers and opportunities: All types of child care facilities – including group and family child care homes and child care centers — should be clearly defined, differentiated, and permitted by-right in an expanded number of districts, with a particular focus on integrating child care near and within neighborhoods, work places, and community facilities. Use Standards—such as hours of operation, fencing, and parking—should also be evaluated for their potential to hinder a child care business. We recommend that you use the RRC Zoning Ordinance Self-Audit for Child Care Readiness as a guide.

3. Incentivize and streamline child care business expansion: Consider offering zoning incentives such as square footage bonuses or increases to dimensional standards for the inclusion of child care facilities on a site. Further, assess your community’s development review process for opportunities to reduce time and waive application, investigation, and business licensing fees for child care business owners.

Child care readiness is a continual process that requires engagement within and across planning, policy, and community partnerships, but has invaluable payoffs for your community’s people and prosperity.

Taking Action at McKenna: To continue educating the planning community about the relationship between land use policy and child care access, McKenna Planners Lauren Sayre, AICP and Ashley Jankowski, AICP co-authored “Creating a Childcare-Friendly Community”, which was featured in the June 2025 issue of the American Planning Association’s Zoning Practice.

Further promoting child care readiness across Michigan, McKenna partnered with the Michigan Association of Planning (MAP) and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) to develop the RRC Child Care Readiness Toolkit.

This toolkit offers step-by-step guidance to collaboratively transforming the child care landscape in your community in the short- and long-term. Learn more about the resource with the RRC Child Care Readiness Toolkit Webinar, and contact McKenna for additional action steps to promote child care readiness in your community.