DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEFENSE ANNOUNCEMENT

FOR THE DEGREE OF PHD IN BUSINESS

PhD Student: Cynthia Fernandes

Title: Pursuing Stability in Massachusetts' Affordability Crisis: Eviction Mitigation, Affordable Housing Policy, and the Impact on Small Business Communities

Date & Time:  Thursday, June 18, 2026, 12:00PM – 2:00PM EST (previously June 10th)

Location:  Smith 122 or via remote connection

Remote Connection:   https://bentley.zoom.us/j/96465389915

Dissertation Committee Chair:  Kerri-Ann Sanderson, Darald R. and Juliet R. Libby Associate Professor of Accounting, Bentley University.

Committee Members:  Curtis Smith, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Bentley University; Ernesto Castañeda, Director of the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, Associate Professor of Sociology, American University.

ABSTRACT

My dissertation broadly focuses on understanding affordable housing policies and outcomes, like eviction, in the state of Massachusetts. Across the Commonwealth, there is a shortage of affordable rental homes, and many low- and middle-income households spend more than a third of their income on rent. The Department of Housing and Urban Development considers households that spend more than 30% of their income on housing to be “cost-burdened”. In Massachusetts, one quarter of middle-income households are cost burdened, and more than three quarters of very low-income households. For the most cost-burdened renters, this financial strain forces painful trade-offs, sacrificing necessities like food and healthcare, and heightens vulnerability to housing instability, including eviction. These pressures are driven by long-standing structural factors, including job loss and wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation since the 1970s. Through three related studies, I explore eviction mitigation programs across the nation, the effect of affordable housing on eviction rates in Massachusetts’s suburban municipalities, and the relationship between affordable housing and small business outcomes in the Commonwealth.

The first chapter provides a literature review of eviction mitigation programs and affordable housing policies in the United States, synthesizing 56 peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2025 across urban studies, sociology, political science, and economic disciplines. To organize this body of research, the chapter adopts a multilevel framework that situates eviction as the product of forces interacting at multiple scales. At the macro-level, national housing and labor markets, federal divestment in subsidized housing, and market-oriented production through programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) shape the supply and affordability of housing. At the meso-level, institutional rules administered through housing courts, as well as race and power dynamics mediate how eviction risk is distributed across communities. At the micro-level, gentrification, rent control policies, neighborhood characteristics, household vulnerabilities, and tenant-landlord relationships determine individual exposure to housing instability. The chapter identifies key policy mitigants that intervene at various levels to reduce eviction risk, including eviction moratoriums, emergency rental assistance (ERA), landlord-tenant protections, and right-to-counsel programs.

The second chapter empirically examines the relationship between municipality-level poverty rates and eviction prevalence across Massachusetts, with a focus on the mediating role of affordable housing availability as shaped by local policy compliance. Using municipality-level data from 2017 through 2024 for all 351 Massachusetts municipalities, the analysis evaluates how variation in compliance with state affordable housing policy, particularly Chapter 40B (the “Comprehensive Permit Law”, also known as the “Anti-Snob Zoning Act”) and the more recent Section 3A (the “Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Communities Law”), influences subsidized housing supply and eviction outcomes across suburban contexts. While prior research has established a relationship between poverty and eviction, less is known about how affordable housing availability and local implementation of housing mandates alter these dynamics, at scale. Findings suggest that Chapter 40B compliance shapes how affordable housing resources are distributed across municipalities, with compliant communities showing a stronger association between poverty and housing availability. Poverty retained a robust direct effect on eviction rates across all model specifications, indicating that housing supply interventions alone are insufficient to reduce eviction without complementary policies addressing income adequacy and tenant protections. These findings contribute to scholarship on housing inequality by demonstrating that municipal compliance plays a meaningful role in shaping the distribution of housing resources across high-poverty communities.

The third chapter examines how the availability of affordable housing impacts small businesses, a key community stakeholder. Small businesses comprise 99.5 percent of all enterprises in Massachusetts and employ approximately 44 percent of the state's workforce. Challenging the prevalent misconception that affordable housing exclusively serves vulnerable populations, this chapter argues that affordable housing functions as a strategic economic asset whose availability has meaningful consequences for the moderate-income essential workers in retail, hospitality, healthcare, and education who comprise both the workforce and the customer base of small businesses across the Commonwealth. Drawing on stakeholder theory, the chapter employs a qualitative case study methodology consisting of 25 semi-structured interviews with small business owners. The chapter focuses on labor supply, employee retention, and consumer spending behavior and offers practical implications for municipalities navigating affordable housing development decisions.