While the privilege of voting, and holding office, was restricted to property owners at one point in U.S. history, that is not the case in Seattle circa 1995. But you wouldn't know that based on the composition of our current city council. All nine of our elected metropolitan representatives own homes, with some of them owning more than one property. Some of them are also landlords. Although our city council is ethnically and gender-diverse, it is totally devoid of people who have to pay property owners every month for the privilege of camping on their real estate for some finite amount of time.
Tenants have no viable say in Seattle city government.
There is nothing inherently wrong with owning property or being a landlord. There is nothing necessarily wrong with owning property and sitting on the city council. But there is something wrong with a city council comprised entirely of property owners that routinely makes decisions adversely affecting the property-less. We're talking about a legislative body that shoots down a measure that would prohibit rent increases in buildings with code violations, but passes a law that outlaws sitting on sidewalks. Most obviously, tenants.