Luke Iseman, 31, rented some warehouse space, and installed shipping containers to create 11 original residencies.
"We shouldn't have to live in the middle of nowhere to afford to build our own house. We should be able to do that in the middle of the most expensive cities in the world,"Iseman said.
"We were tired of paying our rent, so for less than rent on two-bedrooms, we're renting this whole half-acre, and [told] the landlord, 'We're just going to build small houses here, and you're going to get an automatic payment of rent every month, so don't worry about it," he said, explaining how the project started.
The profit isn't huge, but the main goal is to share it with others and trigger housing perception changes, Iseman told RT.
"We make a little bit of money from it, not a ton, but we're also able to share what we're doing, and encourage others to copy it. For me, success in this project is how to change people's ideas about housing," he said.
"Everyone should be able to experiment with the roof that they put over their heads. We can change that if we create that norm, and we'll see much more innovation in housing, and it will be much more interesting houses if they are made of shipping containers and all sorts of other objects," Iseman added.
It comes as the rents are soaring in San Francisco and its vicinity: a 16-percent hike for the city ($4,272 the median number) and 15 percent in the metro area ($3,237) over the last year alone.
The median sales price is $1.14 million in San Francisco and $660,000 in the outskirts.
The prices make as many as 60,000 San Franciscans turn to illegal housing, with offices becoming lofts, and garages turning into studios.
Reader Comments
The effectiveness of ". . . regulations, rules, and council restrictions . . .", just like other types of laws, does not depend on their mere existence, but on the manner in which they are enforced.
One of the major reasons the US has so many problems is that laws are enforced selectively - TPTB at all levels pretty much overlook or minimize violations by those they favor, and they come down hard on those they do not.
The only reason that the US can't legitimately be called a banana republic is that we don't export bananas; however, we certainly meet the other criteria related to widespread official corruption and dishonesty in gov't.
Those willing and able to feed a lot of money into the maw of officialdom usually are permitted to do things that those who do not pay are not. The fees are generally much, much greater than the "real" costs incurred by the governing entity, and, even if they don't directly disappear into the pockets of the officials, they support the bureaucratic fiefdoms of those in power.
BTF - WalkCar By Cocoa motors Inc
Behold The Future...A Japanese engineer has developed a portable transporter small enough to be carried in a backpack that he says is the world's first 'car in a bag'.
Twenty-six-year-old Kuniako Saito and his team at Cocoa Motors recently unveiled the lithium battery-powered "WalkCar" transporter, which is the size of a laptop and resembles a skateboard more than a car.
The slender WalkCar is made from aluminium and weighs between two and three kilograms, depending on whether it is an indoor or outdoor version.
Saito expects to see many other uses for his transporter, as he says it has enough power to help people push wheelchairs with ease. The lightweight aluminium board is stronger than it looks, and can take loads of up to 120kg.
It reaches top speeds of 10kph, for distances of up to 12km after three hours of charging.
Its developer says it's also extremely simple to ride. Once the rider stands on it the WalkCar starts automatically, while simply stepping off stops the vehicle. To change direction, the user just shifts their weight.
Best of all, there is no need to find a parking space, because it fits into a small bag when not in use.
Saito said his studies in electric car motor control systems sparked the idea for the new kind of ride.
"I thought, "what if we could just carry our transportation in our bags, wouldn't that mean we'd always have our transportation with us to ride on?" and my friend asked me to make one, since I was doing my masters in engineering specifically on electric car motor control systems," he told Reuters.
Saito says he is confident that WalkCar goes beyond bulkier devices such as the Segway or Toyota's Winglet.
"Maybe I just see it that way, but it seems to me that the US is always the one which invents new products and Japan is the one which takes those products and improves on them to make a better version of it. But here in this case, the WalkCar is a totally new product I have started from scratch. So I also I want to show the world that Japan can also be innovative," he said.
Saito says customers will be able to reserve their own WalkCars from autumn 2015 on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter. The futuristic skateboard will have a price-tag of around 100,000 Japanese Yen (about NZ$1,200). Shipping is expected to begin by spring 2016.