California Fights Its NIMBYs

By any objective measure, nothing that happens in Woodside, Calif., is going to make much difference to a state whose housing crisis is characterized by some of the nation’s highest rents and home prices and has more than 100,000 people living on its streets. The town, a wealthy enclave of the Silicon Valley, is less than 12 square miles and contains about 5,000 of California’s 40 million residents.

But earlier this year, when Woodside’s government made a curious announcement that the town was being designated a sanctuary for mountain lions — a move that, as...