A stampede for child care in Traverse City reveals ‘heartbreaking’ crisis

• A mad scramble for summer camp in Traverse city reveals a troubling statewide problem
• Two-thirds of Michigan are in ‘child care deserts,’ and experts say the business model is broken
• Advocates urge decreased regulations and higher state investment 

TRAVERSE CITY — It’s 6:59 a.m. on a snowy February morning at the Grand Traverse Bay YMCA. In his office, Thomas Graber stands stock-still, staring at his laptop.

In one minute, the application portal opens for summer child care camps.

In years past, families camped outside overnight to get one of a coveted 240 spots in the 10-week camps, which at $185 a week per child are among the least expensive summer options in the region. Worried that parents would suffer frostbite in the northern Michigan night, Graber moved the signup online this year.

As the clock ticked to 7 a.m. parents all across this tourist mecca frantically typed in required information and checked boxes for the weeks of camp they wanted. In some homes, multiple family members typed on separate devices in a Taylor Swift concert-level frenzy to secure a spot.

All spots were filled in two minutes, with the counter on Graber’s laptop continuing to rise in a blur.

“If I were willing to take bribes (for slots), I’d be a rich man,” deadpanned Graber, who is the YMCA’s senior director of programming.

Like many areas of Michigan, Traverse City is experiencing a child care crisis. It’s a year-round problem, but magnified in the summer,  when working parents with elementary students and summer-only residents compete for limited spots in camps across the region.

In 10 counties around northwest Michigan, there are 11,000 child care slots but 2,600 more are needed, according to a recent study. Some 90% of the shortage is for children under the age of 3.

A Michigan State University study concluded two-thirds of the state are in “child care deserts,” where there are three or more children for every available spot in child care centers and licensed in-home care facilities.

Not only a quality of life issue, child care is an economic one as well.

Access and affordability some from seeking work and others to devote almost as much as the cost of college tuition for care. 

From Traverse City to Trenton, the crisis costs the state an estimated $2.9 billion annually in employee turnover, absenteeism and taxes, according to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. In recent years, the Detroit Regional Chamber and the Grand Rapids Chamber have issued reports warning of the intractable bottleneck hobbling businesses.

“It’s a broken business model,” said Alicia Guevara, CEO of the Early Childhood Investment Corporation (ECIC), a stateside group that works to increase public and private investment in early education. “We’re paying child care providers so little, it’s extremely difficult to attract people into the industry and retain them (when) they can go up the road and work at Speedway with less stress.”

Submit, then pray

Meg Lau said her Traverse City family shelled out $18,000 for child care in 2023 for their two children, and though she hasn’t tallied 2024 expenses, she expects the bill was even higher.

Lau has a full-time job in marketing and her husband is an aeronautical engineer, making child care for 3-year-old son Daxton and summer care for him and 7-year-old daughter Emberly essential. 

Lau showed Bridge Michigan an Excel spreadsheet on which she tracks Emberly’s schedule for this summer, a color-coded itinerary of half-day dance camps, horse camps and climbing camps. To complete the summer schedule, Lau needed to nab three weeks at the YMCA.

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Two years ago, Lau showed up at the YMCA at 3 a.m. for the 7 a.m. sign-up.The line was so long she wasn’t able to get all the weeks of care she sought. 

Last year, she arrived at 11 a.m. Sunday, equipped with a tent, propane heater and breakfast burritos. 

Twenty hours early, she was 11th in line.

“It’s such a horrible supply and demand issue,” she said. “Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry.”

With the process switched to online-only this year, Lau and her husband stationed themselves on a couch with their laptops early on sign-up day, Feb. 17. 

They hit refresh over and over on the YMCA site until the application form popped up.

Both hit send within a few minutes.

 “We submit and then we pray,” Lau said later that morning, trying to calm her nerves at a coffee shop. “I don’t know what we’ll do if we don’t get in.”

The scene was similar at the home of Rob Hanel, who was attempting to get 6-year-old Jesse and 4-year-old Wesley into the YMCA programs.

“We made sure we were up and had plenty of coffee and understood the process ahead of time,” Hanel said. “It was stressful. We were wondering, should we start to make contingency plans?”

Hanel pays $97 monthly for a family membership to the YMCA even though they seldom go there, just so his family qualifies to apply for summer camp.

“Around town, everybody is so sick of talking about child care but nothing changes,” Hanel said. “There’s a growing frustration.”

Janie McNabb, CEO of Networks Northwest, a workforce development group serving 10 counties in the northwest Lower Peninsula, calls the child care shortage  “heartbreaking.” 

“The market won't bear the cost to families that actually pays the true cost of providing care,” McNabb said. “So even though it's a very high cost for families, providers aren't making enough to pay a living wage to the people they hire.”

It took in-home care provider Christina Evans, owner of Wild Ginger Day Care in nearby Bellaire, two years to hire her last assistant. Even with that assistant, Evans says she works about 70 hours a week caring for about a dozen kids per day.

“My spots are full,” Evans said. “I wish I could have fewer kids, because some days are so hard. My toddlers need so much supervision.”

Hiring more help isn’t an option because of the extra cost, even if she could find another employee who’d rather change diapers than make almost the same money working at a fast food counter.

Evans declined to say how much she pays her employees, but over two-thirds of Michigan’s early care and education workforce earns less than $15 per hour, despite over 67% possessing a postsecondary credential, according to an Early Childhood Investment Corporation report. 

Most people who spoke to Bridge in Traverse City advocated for state subsidies to boost child care worker wages, with the hope increased pay would buoy employment and expand slots.

“We subsidize oil, we subsidize farms, nobody looks twice about that,” said Traverse City mom Lau. “So why would child care be any different? Everybody has to make a living wage.”

More help, but more needed

Many child care workers were earning more money a few years ago, the beneficiary of federal pandemic funds. Michigan received $1.4 billion in child care funding from the 2021 American Rescue Plan and other COVID-related relief packages. Many child care centers and in-home providers used that money to boost salaries of workers.

That funding ended in September 2023, making an already teetering business model even more shaky.

In the 12-month period ending in February 2025, the 10-county region of northwest Michigan lost 13% of its child care providers and 7% of its child care capacity, according to data provided to Bridge Michigan by the United Way of Northwest Michigan.

The state has stepped up with several programs to help with access and affordability of child care. There are now more than 45,171 students enrolled in the state’s free pre-K program for 4-year-olds, which lawmakers recently expanded. There is also a burgeoning apprenticeship program for child care workers.

A pilot program that splits the cost of child care between the state, employers and employees is now available statewide. There are more than 200 companies participating in MI Tri-Share, which saved workers about $7 million in child care costs through November 2024.

Thirty of those companies are in Grand Traverse County, where Traverse City is located.

“It’s a really good way for employers to find ways to attract and retain talent, and give a unique benefit for working families to be able to afford child care,” said Seth Johnson, CEO of United Way of Northwest Michigan, which manages the MI Tri-Share program for the state.

Despite increased attention to the child care crisis, Michigan still lags some states in investing in solutions.

Minnesota, for example, has implemented legislation to invest $1.3 billion over four years to lower child care prices for families.

One study in Michigan calculated that the state would need to spend $3.2  billion more per year to solve the child care crisis, above the $1 billion already going to early education.

That seems a heavy lift in the current political climate, said the United Way’s Johnson. While additional money may be difficult, Johnson said he believes there is interest in removing some regulations that stymie child care businesses.

One example: in-home providers are not currently allowed to provide pre-school, after-school or summer care for school-age children, Johnson said. Lifting that ban could relieve some of the capacity issues faced in summers in communities like Traverse City, where more than half of child care is offered by in-home providers, and in the Upper Peninsula, where the in-home percentage is even higher.

“It’s frustrating, when we have highly qualified individuals who could provide care, and can’t,” Johnson said.

Munson Healthcare in Traverse City has been trying to ease the child care crunch by providing in-house care for the children of employees. The hospital cares for about 260 children daily at four facilities in the county, with another 180 on a waiting list. 

“We don’t break even, but it’s a huge benefit for employees,” said Brigid  Wilson, manager of children’s educational services at Munson. “It’s a retention tool, but it’s not a recruitment tool at the moment because, yes we have child care, but you also may be on a waiting list for a couple years.”

Wilson said she understands the state’s emphasis on free pre-K for 4-year-olds, but that same urgency should apply to infants and toddlers.

“Research has proved that all brain development happens between birth and age 3 — those are the most crucial times for children to be in quality child care,” Wilson said. “There are 15 child care centers that take in infant/toddler spots (in Grand Traverse County). Two of them are mine, and the others may only have four to eight spots per age group.”

Good news, bad

Back at the YMCA, Graber told Bridge he and his co-workers received blowback from some frustrated parents in the wake of the online rush for summer camp spots, which he understands. 

“We’re taking as many as we can,” he said. “What are they supposed to do?”

Late on sign-up day, the Hanel family received an email notifying them that their two children had gotten spots in the YMCA summer camp.

The Lau family got bad news. They had submitted their application too late. Perhaps Lau and her husband would have to use vacation time to cover the three weeks they’d hoped their children would be at the Y, she wondered. Or maybe they’d open their checkbook wider and apply to a more expensive camp.

 “There’s a sailing camp that registration hasn’t opened for yet,” Lau said. “Maybe we can get in.”