Jade Shenker, 30, a real estate agent at the firm Serhant and star of “Owning Manhattan” on Netflix, answered something no one expected. She was asked how much someone needs to earn to live well in Manhattan, where the average rent already reaches $5,125 a month. Without thinking twice, she replied that homeless people on the streets of New York seem “quite comfortable” to her.
The clip, recorded for the “Girls Who Sublet” channel, exploded on TikTok with more than 16 million views. The criticism was swift: “This is dystopian, I’m genuinely scared”, someone wrote. Others called her “insufferable” and “out of touch with reality”.
What made everything worse was what Shenker had admitted earlier. She does not pay rent because her boyfriend covers the apartment’s $8,000 monthly cost, and she earns between $70,000 and $1 million a year selling buildings. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, more than 350,000 New Yorkers, including 30,955 children, were homeless in May 2026. Another real estate agent stepped in to clarify in the comments: “Not all of us are like that. Some of us do care about people”.
@ohana_nyc $8,000 vs homeless 😮 #nyc #nycapartment ♬ original sound – Ohana NYC