Scores of tiny homes for the homeless already exist in the Bay Area — just not in organized villages with support services attached, as is planned in Sonoma County. So they get treated like tents, shooed away by police and residents from the sidewalks where they’ve been set up.

And they get no serious respect from local authorities.

Oakland artist Gregory Kloehn knows this firsthand. He was the first in the region to start making tiny homes for street people six years ago and hopes to create a village someday. But until that happens, he says, he’s going to keep on crafting his colorful wheeled creations out of discarded wood and metal and handing them out.

Kloehn’s homes measure as small as 100 square feet, and he’s cranked out 45 so far. Because he uses whatever he scrounges up from scrap piles, trash bins and friends, each home costs him about $40, mostly for paint and nails. He’s attracted a huge following among more than the homeless: When he gives workshops on how to build the homes, more than 1,000 people might sign up for 100 slots.

“Tents don’t offer you any privacy,” he said. “But you have a tiny home — you get walls, a door that locks, and you can get a good night’s sleep without having to listen to cars go by and get your eyes stabbed by the light.”

That security has its limits, though: Just like tent campers, those in Kloehn’s houses regularly get moved along by police in Oakland.

Back to Gallery Unsanctioned tiny homes often unwelcome in SF, Oakland 7 1 of 7 2 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 3 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 4 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 5 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 6 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 7 of 7 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle













Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio said the city is exploring “the feasibility of creating a site in Oakland that could allow for a tiny, portable-home community that meets health and safety standards,” but that process is in the most nascent of stages.

Some Kloehn homes have also cropped up in San Francisco, most notably in the sprawling Division Street encampment that was broken up a few weeks ago. That has inspired program developer and former mayoral candidate Amy Farah Weiss to propose building a village in the city with Kloehn.

For months, Weiss has been pitching city officials on the concept of five tiny homes grouped together as transitional housing on a city lot or land lent by a private or nonprofit entity, but says she’s received little support. She wants to call it St. Francis Village.

“Although we would like there to be permanent housing for everyone, we know that is not possible in 2016,” Weiss said. “So we need to do what is possible and necessary to make sure people have a place to sleep, access to portable toilets, other necessities.”

Sam Dodge, Mayor Ed Lee’s coordinator of homeless services, called the tiny-home village concept a “promising idea,” but he prefers for now to stick to the city’s practice of converting existing residential hotels and other buildings into places for the homeless.

“I’ve talked with Amy, but in San Francisco we’ve already been a leader in supportive housing with things like hotel rooms,” Dodge said. “And in the inner city, you need more density.”

Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron