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.
