I think the argument I'm trying to make is that whether or not there are specific provisions in bankruptcy laws that protect home-ownership rights above creditors' rights, the effective use of individual bankruptcy has always been to save people's homes.  Filing for bankruptcy allows individuals to be forgiven other debts in order to be able to afford to pay -- usually also under reduced conditions -- their primary, secured debt in their own home.  It's still a net transfer of wealth from creditors to debtors.  In fact, some recent US Fed research blamed popping of the housing bubble on the new bankruptcy laws in the US which made it more difficult for people to escape credit card debt by filing for bankruptcy (which meant they started paying the credit cards instead of their home mortgages, causing delinquency to spike soon after the new bankruptcy law went into effect).