Is it possible to use bpy.props.PointerProperty to store a pointer to an object? If the user renames an object, the reference via string key is lost.

Is it possible to store a pointer to an object in a property assigned to a class of bpy.types

I checked 

&gt;&gt;&gt; type(obj.bl_rna.properties['parent'])
&lt;class 'bpy.types.PointerProperty'&gt;  



However type for PointerProperty is expected to be a subclass of bpy.types.PropertyGroup but bpy.types.Object is inherited from bpy_struct and bpy.types.ID.
As of release 2.79
it is possible to store a pointer to an object

Usage example:

my_pointer = PointerProperty(name="My Pointer", type=bpy.types.Object)