Ontario teen says he'll live in 'modular home' invention for a year to prove it can end homelessness
He's already invented a wooden car.
Ribal Zebian is going to test a house he designed by living in it for a year.
Ribal Zebian, a student from the city of London in Ontario, Canada, already made headlines last year when he built an electric car out of wood and earned a $120,000 scholarship from it. Now, he's in the news again for something a little different. Concerned with homelessness in his hometown, Zebian got to work creating a different kind of affordable housing made from fiberglass material. In fact, heās so confident in his idea that the 18-year-old plans on living in it for a year to test it out himself.
Currently an engineering student at Western University, Zebian was concerned by both the rising population of the unhoused in his community and the rising cost of housing overall. With that in mind, he conjured up a blueprint for a modular home that would help address both problems.
Zebianās version of a modular home would be made of fiberglass panels and thermoplastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) foam. He chose those materials because he believes they can make a sturdy dwelling in a short amount of timeāspecifically in just a single day.
āWith fiberglass you can make extravagant molds, and you can replicate those,ā Zebian told CTV News. āIt can be duplicated. And for our roofing system, weāre not using the traditional truss method. Weāre using actually an insulated core PET foam that supports the structure and structural integrity of the roof.ā
Zebian also believes these homes donāt have to be purely utilitarianāthey can also offer attractive design and customizable features to make them personal and appealing.
āEssentially, what Iām trying to do is bring a home to the public that could be built in one day, is affordable, and still carries some architecturally striking features,ā he said to the London Free Press. āWe donāt want to be bringing a house to Canadians that is just boxy and that not much thought was put into it.ā
Beginning in May 2026, Zebian is putting his modular home prototype to the test by living inside of a unit for a full year with the hope of working out any and all kinks before approaching manufacturers.
āWe want to see if we can make it through all four seasons- summer, winter, spring, and fall,ā said Zebian. āBut thatās not the only thing. When you live in something that long and use it, you can notice every single mistake and error, and you can optimize for the best experience.ā
While Zebian knows that his modular homes aren't a long-term solution to either the homeless or housing crisis, he believes they could provide an inexpensive option to help people get the shelter they need until certain policies are reformed so the unhoused can find affordable permanent dwellings.
@hard.knock.gospel What to buy for the homeless at the grocery store. š Most people get it wrong. After being there myself, these are the survival items that actually matter šÆ The 2nd to last one is about more than survivalāitās about DIGNITY. We are all one circumstance away from the same shoes š SAVE this for your next grocery run. š IG@hardknockgospel Substack@ Outsiders_Anonymous #homelessness #helpingothers #kindness #payitforward #learnontiktok
Zebianās proposal and experiment definitely inspires others to try to help, too. If you wish to lend a hand to the unhoused community in your area in the United States, but donāt know where to look, you can find a homeless shelter or charity near you through here. Whether itās through volunteering or through a donation, you can help make a difference.
- Homeless man turns $27 and a fib into a multimillion dollar business helping ex-convicts āŗ
- A Utah town's solution to homelessness is so good, every state will be mad that they weren't first. āŗ
- Convertible sleeping bags turn into insulated tents for people experiencing homelessness āŗ
- Ex-convict buys North Carolina prison and turns it into housing for other former inmates - Upworthy āŗ
Someone honks a car horn. 
Before you click 'send' on anything else, read this comic. It's important.
Everyone seems to be clicking "send" a bit too early nowadays.
We officially live in a world where internet trigger-happy world leaders can send massive populations into a devolved tail spin with erratic tweets, posts, and subsequent responses. These posts can have far-reaching consequences, and in the haste to respond in kind we've forgotten that we've normalized this kind of attitude.
Boulet is a French comic artist who has been writing about this for 15 years.
Originally he started writing an autobiographical series, but when he realized how accessible it was to his readers, he decided to make it fictional. "So it's mostly 'drawn stand up comedy,'" he explains. "I'm the main character, but in the same way comedians are there own character when they are on stage. The purpose is not really to talk about me but about situations of everyday's life everyone can relate to."
In his words, "The comic (below) was an anecdote about a Facebook mistake, I had basically two choices: Use it as a Facebook status to make my friends laugh or try to dramatize the whole process into an internal crisis to make it a story."
Comic by Bouletcorp, where it originally appeared. Used here with permission.
āāāāāāāThat "internal crisis" is something Boulet is very interested in.
Boulet enjoys using the accessible medium of cartoons as a way to explore complex issues. He loves learning about and studying consciousness and neuroscience. His fans enjoy this.
"There were fun discussions in the comments about how the brain works ... the very idea that we have a parallel process that can interfere, overlap or get in conflict is actually a thing. What I found most intriguing about this story was to literally feel my hand freeze BEFORE I could put an explanation on the WHY it froze."
He also had a great suggestion as to figuring out the motivations behind certain posts. "We should always go on social networks with EEGs on. We would learn a lot."
After what we've seen on social media over the last few years, it's hard to disagree.