‘It’s like a nightmare’: Parents wait years for subsidized day care

Tamara Hudson’s workday routine typically starts before 4 a.m., when the bleary-eyed single mother rouses her 2-year-old son in their Redwood City home, wraps him in a blanket and places him in her Honda for the first of her 40-mile round trips to the closest day care provider she can afford.

After dropping him off in Fremont, Hudson heads back to Redwood City for her 6 a.m. shift assembling medical parts. In the afternoon, she drives back to Fremont to pick up him and by the time she gets home — 6 p.m. if she’s lucky with Bay Area traffic  — she’s depleted.