Landlord repeatedly enters our Queens apartment without notice while we’re on vacation. What are our rights?

My family rents a floor in a multi-family home in Queens, NYC. We pay roughly $2K a month and have lived here for over 10+ years (we got a new landlord ~5 years ago). We live on the first floor, and our landlord’s family lives on the second floor.

A few years ago, my family went on a two-week long vacation, and when we got back home, we noticed that $5K in cash was missing. The cash was never obviously laid out, and it was spread across our home. During our vacation, our landlord decided to make some renovations on our house, without advance notice. We are unsure whether our landlord or their contractor stole the money.

At the time, my family did not file a police report nor complaint. I was a kid back then, and I honestly don’t know why my parents didn’t complain to our landlord either, but I can’t change back time… My mother also preferred keeping cash at home due to her fear of banks (some scam related incident that happened a long time ago). After this instance, we installed a hidden camera within the living room of our floor.

A few weeks ago, my family went on a vacation for two weeks, which our landlord knew ahead of time. They decided, without any notice, to renovate the walkway between the first and second floors. Allegedly, our landlord says that the contractor wanted to also make additional renovations inside our floor, so they entered our apartment without permission. We received an alert from our camera system, and immediately called to get them out of our house.

We just got back home from our vacation, and I was wondering if there was any recourse. I am doubt we’d have a case for getting the $5K back since it was undocumented three years ago, but if there’s some optimal way to file a complaint or start a paper trail against my landlord, please let me know.

Any advice is also appreciated. Should I talk to the landlord and ask for cheaper rent on the basis of stolen money? The landlord is also an immigrant family (like mine), so I think some lawyer-threatening scare tactic might work (i.e., via reduced rent for the year). Or maybe getting an actual lawyer involved might be the move?

P.S. I know that 5K isn’t so “much” but it’s basically 300+ hours of my mother’s time, and although she doesn’t seem to want to fight for it, I would like to try.