There is nothing well-intentioned about NIMBYism. While all this culture war keeps us busy, cars and short buildings laugh at us.
All American cities are anti-growth. The hippie legacy is pretty thin at this point and the cities are closer culturally to each other than the stagnant areas.
The Bay Area/California simply had more relativd demand for growth than many other areas, and better weather than the Northeast re homelessness on particular, and this is the inevitable result.
NIMBYism is Houston, Atlanta, etc. buying one-way bus tickets to Seattle and SF. Locals who want the problem solved are not NIMBY's.