Yes, yes you can. For a while, Bankruptcy attorneys were on edge because of a case involving a woman who filed for Bankruptcy and had a rent stabilized apartment. The Chapter 7 Trustee tried to claim that the apartment was part of the Bankruptcy estate, and therefore that he could sell the apartment back to the Landlord and kick the tenant out. This scared a number of people in New York. Individuals that wanted to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy were scared that if they filed such a case, their apartments (that they could sometimes barely afford) would be taken away and they’d have nowhere to go. Bankruptcy attorneys were similarly scared and didn’t want to file these types of cases for the same fear of having their clients be kicked out of their apartment. The Court case made it’s round across the New York State Court system, finally ending up at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the tenant, and stated that the rent stabilized lease was in fact a public benefit and therefore exempt as property of the estate. You can read much more about the court decision here (Alex please cite my blogpost where I wrote about this-Evernote won’t let me.) So, if you’re wondering whether or not you have to fear losing your apartment if you file a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in New York City, the answer, for all intents and purposes, seems to be no.