How about an interesting possibility regarding the OP's observation, and possibly hiring the same "junk hauler" or another one, located in the burbs of NYC.
A few years ago the MIL passed. She owned an extraordinary little cape cod that was not only cute, but looked like an "Americana" shop, circa 1950. The place was filled with all kinds of stuff, and there literally wasn't a place to put your hand on a wall, or table surface. She was not a hoarder, or junk collector, but a collector of what appeared to be colonial to depression era antiques.
Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that 95% of her collection was reproductions, and in the eyes of auction houses, and buyers, not worth the space they took up.
We live 40 miles away, and spent the next five months, carefully trying to deal with this issue. We gave everything away that anybody show an interest in. We sold a very small portion at an auction. We had a good will type service show up, and remove anything that they could resell. We then hauled at least a dozen truck loads of small trinkets to a local, no profit thrift store. In the end we hired an outfit out of the NYC area who loaded up 40 yards of household goods. These guys busted their asses for a long, ten hour day of loading. They removed everything from baby furniture, and wing back chairs, to a chest freezer. The removal and hauling were far from cheap, and a lot of really good stuff ended up getting tossed, but at some point you have to decide where to draw the line.
My own mother passed within a few weeks of the MIL. (oddly enough, they lived on the same block.) We had similar issues with her estate. Two valuable lessons were learned. First, two auctioneers confirmed the same sad fact. In our region, the average contents of an average 3/2 house fail to raise enough value to justify holding an on site auction, or paying to have the contents removed, and delivered to a weekly auction. Second, we as a society have WAAAY too much shit, and need to think about how badly we are burdening our survivors when we leave a situation that takes hundreds of hours of hard work, and thousands of dollars to clean up.
We recently moved into a new house. Not only is the place modestly sized, and owner built, it has forced a real downsizing. Moving day involved me, and two grunts, doing two quick trips with a 14' U-Haul van. The first trip a full van, the second was about five pieces of big furniture. If the wife and I get run over by a bus today, our kids will end up dealing with about 20-30% of the mess that our Moms left us.
So, to wrap it all up. I learned that you can't judge something like this until you have all the unpleasant facts. We fill our lives up with massive volumes of needless shit, and don't give much thought to why, or if it will impact others. We attach a much higher value to our stuff than society does, and unless we have extremely good taste, and skill, our personal stash probably isn't worth the cost of hauling it away.