Actually every city in California is mandated to present a realistic plan to satisfy their Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) every 10 years if they wish to keep access to state infrastructure funding in addition to local control of city zoning. That is a law from 1970 reaffirmed and strengthened in 1990 and 2019.

Santa Monica has refused to do so for the past 10 years. This year they just had their entire zoning code essentially overturned by the state (again, per that law) until they were back in compliance. In the 3 months they were deemed noncompliant before they got their act together, applications for 4000 units were filed and now must be approved ministerially, which goes a long away to satisfying their 8000 unit shortage as determined by RHNA!

Beverly Hills and Pasadena just had their housing elements (zoning) thrown out for the same reason. San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto will be next unless they get their act together. No city itself is the source of the state's housing crisis. But Santa Monica is one part of it.

The YIMBY's are asking the individual property owners be allowed to decide what to do with their own properties. Not letting government dictate what people do doesn't seem like "tyranny" or "expropriation" to me.

The only tyranny in California housing politics is the assumption that people who own houses in a town are the only ones who should get to determine the future of that town.

A democracy that defines itself so narrowly as to exclude most people isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy.