> The problem is that there will always be more voting renters than voting landlords. So in a purely democratic system, policies which favor renters at the expense of landlords will always be supported.
I don’t know about that… the voting landlords (NIMBYs) sure make it a point to reduce development “to preserve their neighborhood character”.
You're conflating landlords with property owners as a whole. There are a lot more people who own and live in their home than there are landlords. Homeowners are less likely to favor pro-landlord legislation than landlords themselves, and many may even strongly support pro-renter legislation (like myself, though I agree some of the pro-renter legislation certainly goes too far).
The NIMBY "character of the neighborhood" phenomenon has nothing to do with landlords; that's a homeowner thing.
Landlords might be anti-development because a constrained housing supply means higher rents, but that's something else entirely. And if NIMBY homeowners magically stopped being NIMBYs tomorrow, we wouldn't even bother talking about NIMBYs anymore, because NIMBY landlords wouldn't have enough political power to matter.