Download This PaperHousing Stability and Self-employment
71 Pages Posted: 7 May 2020 Last revised: 27 May 2026
Date Written: April 13, 2020
Abstract
This paper examines whether legal housing-stability protections encourage self-employment. We exploit statewide just-cause eviction laws passed in four U.S. states between 2015 and 2021, which protect renters in good standing from arbitrary non-renewals, and compare renters with homeowners in the same neighborhood-year. Affected renters stay at their current residence longer and expand their labor-market participation through self-employment, with no offsetting decline in wage employment, higher weekly hours, more business income, and more private health insurance coverage. Placebo simulation and causal-forest decomposition suggest the self-employment effect is robust and broadly uniform across the renter population. Low-rent-burden renters also see improvement in housing stability and self-employment, indicating that just-cause protections are not limited to low-income households. The response also appears in capital-intensive and high-failure-rate industries and in incorporated businesses, consistent with the protections releasing renters' financial and risk capacity for economically meaningful entrepreneurship that contributes to the local economy.
Keywords: Housing stability, Entrepreneurship, Renter protections, Self-employment, Just-cause eviction
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