Peggy Bailey is the Vice President for Housing and Income Security. She oversees the Center’s work to protect and expand access to affordable housing, improve states’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and child support programs and expand employment opportunities to housing and cash assistance recipients.

Throughout her career, she has helped build connections between the housing community and health, nutrition, child welfare, and other systems of care, amid growing recognition that access to stable, affordable housing is a necessary foundation that enables people with low incomes to meet other basic needs and make progress toward achieving their hopes and dreams. Her housing policy expertise focuses on ways to expand access to rental assistance, improve and preserve public and multifamily affordable housing, advance eviction prevention and mitigation strategies, and help renters grow savings and credit histories. Bailey’s work is centered in identifying the ways racism and discrimination in housing policy have resulted in disinvestment in communities of color and created disparate outcomes for people in marginalized groups.

She first joined the Center in 2016 as the director of “Connecting the Dots: Bridging Systems for Better Health,” a Center initiative that identified opportunities to strengthen the link between housing and health policy. She then served as the Center’s VP for Housing Policy from 2019-2021.

Prior to rejoining the Center, Bailey served in the Biden/Harris Administration as the Senior Advisor on Rental Assistance to HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge. She also served as the Director of Health Systems Integration for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, where she focused on Medicaid expansion and finding sustainable funding sources for the services that people with histories of homelessness and chronic health conditions need to maintain their housing. She also worked for the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, and the city of Rockwall, Texas.

Bailey holds a B.A. in Government from the University of Notre Dame, and a Master of Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Dallas.