I also hope the author was joking about being part of the underclass--which I'm willing to give them a charitable interpretation because of the quotes.
The mere fact that they can afford to live in a 1-bedroom in the EV is, well, evidence against that fact. You're not even part of the underclass in Manhattan if you can do that.
But that's exactly what I take issue with - you're not! Someone's delivering your food, someone's working at the bodega you go to. You won't encounter nearly the same level of homelessness as you do in SF, but you will encounter homeless people regularly nonetheless. You run into the actual underclass far more often than you encounter the extremely wealthy.
If you call yourself part of the underclass, either you're: Forgetting that they exist, or you're pretending that your economic situation is somehow roughly equivalent. I don't think you need to keep that on your mind every single second of the day, but at least be honest about it.
You are much closer to your deliveryman than to fat cats making multi-million dollar salaries on Wall Street. That's the comparison the Author was making.
I assumed it to be a joke, or at least referencing that a person with a "white-collar" job in NYC at times feels like they live more like the middle/lower class than the upper-class.
For instance, New York City made significant efforts to include a large number of affordable housing in many recent developments. People within a certain income range(30-100k ish) can apply for these apartments at a significantly reduced rent. This allows people who work middle-income jobs to at least live close to work. I'm not arguing the against the merits of these programs as I think income diversity is good, but this combined with the reality that many new developments included mainly luxury units or affordable units without much in-between, causes a significant rent burden for many New Yorkers making 100-200k.
Contrast that to say taking a 15% salary reduction to live in Nashville, that same person now probably lives much more like the upper-class of Nashville than the lower class.
I should point out that this isn't universally the case, there are plenty of people who moved into these areas during a very different era and are protected in the form of rent control, public housing, or simply purchasing during the height of the crack epidemic that did a ton of damage to the east village.
The mere fact that they can afford to live in a 1-bedroom in the EV is, well, evidence against that fact. You're not even part of the underclass in Manhattan if you can do that.