Directed by Steph Ching and Ellen Martinez, Slumlord Millionaire follows a handful of renters in New York City who heroically contested their horrifying living conditions and predatory landlords. The documentary serves as a powerful call to action, exposing the level of greed and corruption that tenants are forced to endure.
Before you feast your eyes on the highest levels of greed and corruption with little respite, you must first address the depth of the film’s title. It’s not just a play on words from the 2008 film, Slumdog Millionaire, but shares more similarities than the titles would suggest. While that film was set in urban slums in Mumbai, India, this film (Slumlord) is set in urban neighborhoods in New York City. In the 2008 film, the main protagonist, Dev Patel, achieved wealth from the slums, whereas in Slumlord, landlords and developers achieve wealth from the slum’s tenants.
Slumdog Millionaire celebrates the improbable rise out of the slums, while Slumlord Millionaire critiques the exploitative accumulation of wealth from the slums. Both films, however, use the concept of extreme wealth and poverty to explore stories of survival, struggle, and the pursuit of more suitable living conditions.
The film uses archival footage and personal stories, including that of Samantha Bravo-Huertero, who has lived in her family’s Brooklyn apartment her whole life. However, this long-term residency didn’t matter to the landlord, as Samantha explained the neglect in their unit. Issues like leaks and structural failures often went unaddressed. “I guess for her it was like, maybe this will make you move,” she said. This tactic is common among landlords to force rent-stabilized tenants out to pursue higher earners to pay higher rents.
In New York City, the most populous city in the country, a whopping 69% of residents rent. Within that percentage, a third of residents spend 50% of their income on rent.
In Jamaica, Queens, we hear from Moumita Ahmed, who ran for city council in hopes of giving rights to tenants. With admirable intentions and an endorsement from Bernie Sanders, she gave hope to an area suffering under the boot of billionaire developers like Joseph Chetrit and Stephen Ross. She would eventually lose her race to James Gennaro, a democrat backed by a PAC (Political Action Committee) funded by Ross.
In Chinatown (Manhattan), we hear from residents dealing with leaks, sewage, maggots, and rats. Aside from neglect, many of them spoke of intimidation due to being non-English speakers. On the other hand, Evan Rugen, a real estate agent and developer, shares how Chinatown is transitioning from a place to avoid to “the” place to be. Providing evidence of this transition, he describes his typical clientele as H.E.N.R.Y.s (High Earner Not Rich Yet), consulting and finance bros, and “Chads and Brads.”
The most heartbreaking part of the film involves deed theft. Deed theft is described as an “epidemic” in places like Brooklyn and Queens. Adam Grumbach and Bill Lienhard, deed theft lawyers, painted a painful picture of the toll the fraud takes on victims and how far fraudsters will go to seize potential property. That’s when we’re taken to Clinton Hill (Brooklyn) and find Janina Davis, a former landlord, who shows us where her old building stood and never increased rent to keep up with market rates.
Janina was a model in the 90s, but now, she’s back to renting again after her building was taken away due to deed fraud. After being referred to a pair of developers, she showed interest in developing another building on the lot next to hers. The gentlemen were agreeable at first, even allowing their daughter to play with Janina’s. After the trio formed a joint LLC, Altria (her daughter’s name), Janina was defrauded out of her building and given 30 days to leave. The sleazy developers filed for the LLC but never put her name on the documents, so their verbal agreement of a 50-50 venture was a lie. After forcing her out, they immediately filed for bankruptcy and sold the building for over $3 million.
Systemic injustice, gentrification, and the struggle for basic human rights are common themes in this film. It also highlights how some accrue wealth (the “millionaire” title), not by overcoming adversity, but by leveraging power and exploiting the vulnerable. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Hope lies in collective action. Collective action and grassroots activism have become a must in the fight against such unconventional methods of fraud and abuse.
Slumlord Millionaire gets a 9.5 out of 10. This powerful film is part of the PBS documentary series VOCES, which features the best of Latino arts, culture, and history and shines a light on current issues that impact Latino Americans. Rising rent prices are a problem in New York City, and thieves preying on the innocent have become commonplace. As our economy shifts, the film serves as a timely reminder that this could happen to anyone, anywhere.
Slumlord Millionaire is available now across PBS platforms.
-Jon Jones
Genre: Documentary
Rating: Unrated
Runtime: 1 hr 26 mins
Trailer: Watch
U.S. Release Date: July 28, 2025