San Jose mobile home park manager advised city on rent increase

San Jose officials are set to vote on a policy that would increase rent for residents living in mobile home parks. But internal emails show the city favoring input on the proposal from a mobile home park manager.

Emails shared with San José Spotlight show Housing Department employees asking Ryan Jasinsky, property manager of mobile home park company owner Brandenburg, Staedler & Moore, to provide feedback on the draft policy that would increase rent for residents by up to 10% whenever a mobile home is sold. Jasinsky represents the company and other park owners on the Housing and Community Development Commission. The company owns eight mobile home parks in San Jose, including Mill Pond, Mountain Springs and Quail Hollow.

The San Jose City Council is set to vote on the policy Tuesday.

The emails date back to September 2025, before the draft policy was published on the commission’s Nov. 13 agenda for commissioners to weigh in. Other commissioners said they didn’t get a chance to shape policy as Jasinsky did.

“What I feel is betrayed,” Commissioner Daniel Finn, who represents mobile park residents and lives in a mobile home, told San José Spotlight.

Emails dating as early as Sept. 21, 2025 show Soliván asking Jasinsky to do a “page turn” on the draft policy to get feedback. In that same email, he asked to set up a meeting with Jasinsky.

Jasinsky sent another email to Soliván and Eviction Prevention Manager Emily Hislop on Nov. 5 providing input on the policy language of the rental increase.

Jasinsky did not respond to a request for comment.

When San José Spotlight asked Soliván if he met with any other commissioners, he said he offered to schedule a meeting with Finn twice to review the draft with him. Finn canceled both times, Soliván said.

“The Housing Department is committed to meeting with all stakeholders on matters related to our work,” Soliván told San José Spotlight.

Finn said Soliván only offered to meet with him once after Finn called the department in early December after learning Soliván had met privately with Jasinsky. Their meeting was scheduled for Dec. 5, but Finn said he canceled because he thought his input would be ignored, since the proposed policy was already public.

“I declined the meeting because they had already met with Ryan and there had been no outreach to the mobile home community,” Finn said. “There was nothing else I could add.”

Other commissioners, including Ali Shapirman and Chair Ruben Navarro, said they didn’t know about the proposed rental increase before the city made the proposed policy public.

“This raises a lot of transparency issues,” Navarro told San José Spotlight. “(Soliván) could have asked for my input but he didn’t. He should have let the whole commission know that he was working with Ryan on the proposed language changes to the (policy) and he should have absolutely have invited the mobile home residents’ representative Commissioner (Finn) to work on the draft as well.”

Martha O’Connell, regional manager for Golden State Manufactured-Home Owners League and mobile home resident, said these emails throw Soliván’s objectivity into question.

“These proposals are nothing but a wish list for the park owners,” O’Connell told San José Spotlight.

O’Connell, who served on the commission for eight years, said Jasinsky told her a week prior to November commission meeting he heard “through the grapevine” the city was going to increase rent.

“He didn’t want me to know that he was the one writing it,” O’Connell said.

When mobile home park owners wanted similar rent changes in 2017, then-Housing Director Jacky Morales-Ferrand did not support it. At a Dec. 11 housing commission meeting, she said there was no data to support the argument that raising rents is necessary.

At that meeting, a majority of commissioners voted against recommending the proposed rent increase. Under the existing policy, property owners are allowed a 3% to 7% rent increase on each parcel every year. Anything more than that requires city approval, and owners can’t increase rent to market rate prices except when a property is abandoned, a resident is evicted or when a sale falls through.

Dozens of residents spoke up about preserving one of the city’s last truly affordable housing options.

“To me it’s just greed. They are already making so much money,” Nancy Stevens, a mobile home resident in Mill Pond Mobile Home Park, previously told San José Spotlight.

Stevens said the average space rent of the homes for sale in her park is $1,269 a month. If a park has 370 homes, that would mean property owners are collecting nearly $470,000 every month, or $5.6 million a year.

“This is another example of taking more money from the homeowner and giving more money to the park owner,” Stevens said.

The San Jose City Council meets Tuesday at 1:30 p.m.

This story will be updated.

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.