My first thought about this was not terror, but criminals who are aliens, given the type of building and NYC demographics now.
What NYC demographics? Do you even know where NYC is? From your post I guess you live in a trailervl park and use a septic technology known as a “hole in the ground.”
The least expensive 1-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is about $3000 a month. Nobody who is poor lives here. All fingers point to the landlord hiring off-the-books contractors to renovate his buildings.
The last name of the “contractor” was Albanian or Serbian - he is also a slumlord who owns a few decaying, fire-trap buildings in Upper Manhattan. He’s an immigrant, but probably perfectly legal, since we brought at lot of them here.
Many of them started off as building supers in slum buildings in NYC and parlayed that into “construction” and property ownership. You have to give them credit for that, but they are terrible contractors, think you do everything by paying off the inspectors, have no skills and don’t want any, thank you, and are corrupt in every possible way. And they are worse landlords.