While affordable housing is a big problem for many Juneau residents, child care is of equal or greater concern for many families.
Some families pay more for child care each month, depending on the number of children and their ages, than they do for rent or a mortgage. And vacancies in child care centers are lower than they have been in years.
"It's something that is under the radar, except for young families," said Barbara Belknap, president of the Juneau chapter of the National Organization for Women. "There are people who have chosen not to move to Juneau or have left Juneau because they can't find child care."
Some citizens, such as Belknap and other Juneau NOW members, are going so far as to call it a crisis, and are working to find solutions to make child care in Juneau more accessible and affordable.
Joy Lyon, executive director for the Association for the Education of Young Children-Southeast Alaska, said child care has become an increasing problem in Juneau.
"It's been such a chronic crisis for so long, but now it has definitely escalated to a crisis-crisis," she said.
Child-care costs can be staggering for working families in Juneau, Lyon said. According to the association's statistics, the average cost for a preschool-aged child enrolled in child care full-time is $590 a month. Rates increase for infants, she said.
"If a family has two children in child care, they can be paying almost as much as their rent," Lyon said.
The local chapter of NOW hosted a meeting last month with stakeholders, local leaders and parents to discuss the problem and potential solutions.
Affordable and quality child care is an important economic indicator for Juneau, Belknap said. She said child-care providers have a hard time making a living, parents have problems affording child care and the number of vacancies are limited.
"There's just this critical shortage of child care spaces in Juneau," she said.
Lyon said AEYC maintains a database through a child care resource and referral grant administered by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services that tracks vacancies, rates and other information.
In 11 years on the job, Lyon said the child-care vacancy rates in Juneau are lower than she has ever seen them.
"We've lost over 200 licensed and approved spaces in the last year, since last July, in Juneau alone," she said.
Lyon and Belknap said multiple factors have led to this, including the high cost of running child care, government regulations and the lack of an increase in public assistance rates for child care.
According to census data, as many as 1,500 child-care-age children in Juneau are from dual-income houses. According to Lyon, the total child-care capacity in Juneau is slightly more than 600, which "is not meeting the need out there."