I don't think that's really true. The people in Oakland who would be NIMBYs and have enough money to be effective at it all live in the hills, or in Piedmont. The people who live in the flat parts of Oakland, and to a large extent all of the flatlanders of the East Bay, don't have anything to fight with.

Now compare to the kind of 19th-century legacy gazillionaires along the CAHSR route in Atherton.