It's more a question of simple economics and bad public policy than racism:

If average landlord in New York were able to develop property and make a profit without going through 4000 bureaucratic hoops (not to mention rent control), then self-interested landlords would develop more residential housing, supply would meet demand, and there'd be enough housing in New York without sky-high rents.  

As things now stand, a huge proportion of housing is rent-controlled, which means landlords cannot remove existing tenants in order to upgrade their housing (i.e.: by adding more floors).  And even in non-rent-controlled buildings, you have to go through so many levels of bureaucracy and face off against so many entrenched "preservationists," and development opponents that only large corporations building luxury condos can afford to build anything. 

The result: a private good (housing) that physically could easily be increased (if only by building up) becomes unnaturally scarce.  Suddenly finding housing becomes a zero-sum game, where if you find a house, someone else can't.  Because housing is a zero sum game, the people in the game naturally compete against each other.  Of course the poor always lose these types of games, and when the winners and losers can be divided among racial lines, all hell breaks loose.

The bottom line is no white person should feel guilty because he wants to live in NYC and can afford to put a roof over his head.  The people who should feel guilty are the preservationists, the development opponents, the anti-traffic crowd, and various other NIMBY groups who stifle development of more housing. 

--Z