They said New York State, not City. Pick a random town w/ 20k-30k people and you'll see rents as low as $1000. Newburgh is a random example I chose. So there's no reason to think their comments requires them to be more or less wealthy, poor or not poor.

Or maybe they've been poor, and now they're not, so they're speaking from prior experience. Or they have friends or family or acquaintances that are poor. It's not like a wealthy person can't have contact with folks less wealthy.