Working for HUD Secretary George Romney, Malcolm Peabody helped launch the creation of Housing Choice Vouchers, one of the few anti-poverty programs with enduring bipartisan support. Mike grew up in a prominent family in Massachusetts. His ancestor, George Peabody, was born in 1795 in what was then South Danvers and is now Peabody. Though thrifty, George Peabody gave generously to public causes. He became the acknowledged father of modern philanthropy. In the United States, his philanthropy largely took the form of educational initiatives. In Britain, it took the form of providing housing for the poor. Mike tells us how that came about. He also tells the story of how his mother was drawn into civil rights.

Mike was the Co-Director of the Boston Chapter of the  SCLC which is the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Many Black people who were demonstrating were getting hurt and jailed, but there was no news being reported on it. So the SCLC's decision was to get older White people, not just young people, to go down to St. Augustine to demonstrate. They hoped the image of grandmothers being hauled off to jail would gain national publicity. And that's when Mike's mother got involved. A Peabody from Massachusetts. At the time, his brother was governor of Massachusetts and up for reelection, so she was a high profile person in more than one way.

Mike's contribution to subsidized housing started when Mike came to Washington in early 1969 to work at HUD as the new Administration's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Equal Opportunity under Secretary George Romney. He previously has an illustrious career working in State and local government housing efforts. He chaired the Massachusetts Special Commission on Low-income Housing that helped create a Commonwealth Rental Assistance Program - the first vouchers for private housing in the country - and he felt it might be a potential for Federally-funded housing. He had just finished running for a Congressional District seat as a Republican, unlike his brother, Chub Peabody, who had been Governor of Massachusetts and his sister, Marietta Tree, who had served as an Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Mike brought his ideas and experience to HUD in an experimental program which eventually became the Housing Choice Voucher Program, the largest subsidized housing program in HUD today. Listen in to learn how Mike gave people the choice to better their lives in some of his programs at HUD. You will also discover how the GI bill which positively impacted the lives of the veterans and overall communities when it was first incepted because his model for freedom of choice.