Can a stabilized tenant be forced to sell lease in bankruptcy?

NY Times

New York City and State Join Effort to Shield Stabilized Leases

New York City and state officials have thrown their weight behind an elderly widow 

fighting to keep her rent-stabilized lease from becoming an asset with which to pay 

off her creditors, arguing that it would undermine the safeguards that both bankruptcy 

and rent laws are supposed to provide.


In a brief filed jointly this week with the state’s Court of Appeals, lawyers from the 
state attorney general’s office and New York City’s Law Department said that, under 
current law, a lease for a rent-regulated apartment is not property that can be sold. 
Such a lease, they argued, amounts to a public benefit, just like disability or unemployment benefits, that is exempted from bankruptcy estate and cannot be seized as an asset in a personal bankruptcy.  [Website comment: it is more similar to the exemption for a "homestead" - currently valued at $150,000 or less.] 

Click on the link above for the full article, and on "read more" below for 

Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal's bill to ensure the exemption of a stabilized 

lease.  

A10186

 S T A T E   O F   N E W   Y O R K
       ________________________________________________________________________

                                         10186

                                 I N  A S S E M B L Y

                                    August 25, 2014
                                      ___________

       Introduced  by  COMMITTEE ON RULES -- (at request of M. of A. Rosenthal)
         -- read once and referred to the Committee on Judiciary

       AN ACT to amend the debtor and creditor law, in relation  to  bankruptcy
         exemptions for rent regulated tenancies

         THE  PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEM-
       BLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

1    Section 1. Section 282 of the debtor and creditor law  is  amended  by
    2  adding a new subdivision 4 to read as follows:
    3    4.  BANKRUPTCY  EXEMPTION  FOR  RENT REGULATED TENANCIES. THE DEBTOR'S
    4  INTEREST IN A RESIDENTIAL RENT REGULATED TENANCY, HELD AND  OCCUPIED  BY
    5  THE  DEBTOR FOR A RENT REGULATED UNIT, REGULATED UNDER THE RENT STABILI-
    6  ZATION  LAW  OF  NINETEEN  HUNDRED  SIXTY-NINE,  THE  EMERGENCY   TENANT
    7  PROTECTION  ACT  OF  NINETEEN  SEVENTY-FOUR,  THE EMERGENCY HOUSING RENT
    8  CONTROL LAW, THE LIMITED-PROFIT HOUSING COMPANIES ACT OR THE  CITY  RENT
    9  AND REHABILITATION LAW.
   10    S  2.  This  act  shall take effect immediately and shall apply to the
   11  satisfaction of judgments on or after such date.