Colorado Springs is a child care desert.

Almost 47,000 children under the age of 5 live in our county, but only 18,400 licensed child care spots are available. As a result, according to a UCCS study, 26% of parents who say they would otherwise work, stay home due to child care challenges.

The strength of our region’s workforce propels the local business environment. Add to that the dire lack of child care around Fort Carson. We hear from enlisted soldiers to generals that the lack of child care is a serious readiness issue —and the military drives 40% of our region’s economy. The Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC recognized the impact the child care crisis is having on the business sector and identified child care as one of their top four policy issues.

Given its economic effects, child care impacts everyone whether you have young children or not. Child care is critical economic infrastructure.

There are several reasons for our desert conditions.

First, the child care funding system is broken. Funding falls on the shoulders of young families at the beginning of their careers. At an average cost of $20,000 per child care spot per year, it’s now cheaper to send your child to college than to childcare.

Second, we have teacher-children ratios by law, which is crucial for quality and safety. Because labor costs are necessarily high, child care centers operate outside of a typical business model where a well-performing teacher does not equate to more revenue, but does produce better outcomes for children.

Third, the multilayered regulatory framework for child care spaces creates sky-high financial burdens for anyone wanting to open or grow a child care center.

Enter a significant regulatory matrix: zoning.

Zoning is a cornerstone building block for opening a new center. Zoning regulations determine whether a center can even exist in a residential, commercial or mixeduse area of the city. In some zones, child care is prohibited altogether — zero, zilch, none. We’re not talking about restrictions within a broader business category. Child care is explicitly prohibited in the zone.

Other zones are marked as “conditional.” These add more hoops through which to jump, making it costlier, more complicated, and longer to open a space.

You might wonder whether there are zones where having child care centers doesn’t make sense, such as a commercial zone.

From parents’ points of view, there are two ideal locations for child care: near their home and close to where they work. Some businesses around the country even offer child care in their own facility. Families would benefit from child care in all areas of the city.

Even if child care centers are opened in areas with less need, the desert-identified ZIP codes are not islands, and a domino effect takes place where families in close neighborhoods would use new centers, freeing up space in other centers in the deserts.

Some have suggested that historic homes might be in jeopardy of undesirable renovations. That’s not realistic when you consider how costly centers are to renovate just to meet licensing requirements — often running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. On top of that, centers have very small profit margins. The incentives just aren’t there.

In light of these dire needs, the city of Colorado Springs is being responsible and proactive as they wisely and rightly consider zoning changes that will reduce barriers to increasing capacity for more child care spots. We all win when child care is provided in all the places that families live and work.

Sherrylynn Boyles is the president and CEO of Joint Initiatives for Youth + Families. Joint Initiatives houses the early childhood council and coordinates universal preschool in El Paso County.