What he kept coming back to was a deceptively simple philosophy known as "housing first": the idea that real change begins with the most basic need of all — a safe, warm, dignified place to sleep. Everything else — recovery, employment, health, hope — becomes dramatically harder without that foundation, and dramatically more achievable with it.
Tiny-home villages for the homeless existed in a few American cities, but they were often dismissed as experiments: photogenic, well-meaning, and too small to matter. LeBrun wondered whether a village could be built at a scale, and with a level of thoughtfulness, that would answer the sceptics' blunt question — when does a village become real housing, and when is it just a good-looking experiment?
His answer was to go big: 99 homes, built properly, built fast, and embedded in a support system designed to move people not just off the street, but toward genuine independence. And he insisted on one more thing the experiments often lacked: beauty. The homes would be colourful, the streetscapes cared for, the enterprise centre genuinely inviting — because dignity, he believed, is not only about what a place provides, but about what it says.
Building the village, one week at a time
The numbers behind 12 Neighbours are striking. LeBrun committed $4 million of his own fortune to get the project off the ground. With additional grants and support from provincial and federal governments, total funding for the community reached approximately $12 million.
Construction itself became a small marvel of efficiency. In a warehouse on the edge of Fredericton, skilled volunteers and workers assemble the homes using an assembly-line approach — and at peak pace, the factory turned out roughly one finished home per week. Each completed unit is then transported by heavy machinery and set onto concrete block foundations at the village site, a property on Fredericton's north side.
The project grew in visible stages that local media tracked with fascination. By September 2022, CBC reported, 22 homes stood on the site, with the foundations of a café and laundry already underway — an early sign that this was meant to be more than a collection of tiny houses on a lot. By early 2023, the community had grown to 44 homes and 45 residents. In the spring of 2024, the 96th home was installed, completing the initial buildout.
The village's address — 12 Neighbourly Way — is both a street name and a mission statement. The nonprofit's name comes from LeBrun's original idea of sharing the stories of the first twelve neighbours who would move in: twelve human beings, twelve fresh starts.
The economics of compassion
One of the most persistent myths about homelessness is that solving it is unaffordable. The numbers behind 12 Neighbours tell a different story.
LeBrun's personal commitment of $4 million covered land, startup costs, and the factory that builds the homes. Government grants — from both provincial and federal programs — brought the total investment to roughly $12 million. Spread across 96 homes plus the $3-million enterprise centre and supporting infrastructure, the math works out to roughly $125,000 per finished home: a fraction of the cost of a conventional single-family house in Canada, where average prices have more than tripled in two decades.
Just as important is the operating model. Because rent is set at 30 percent of each resident's income — the standard definition of affordable housing used by housing agencies across Canada — the village generates its own modest, sustainable revenue stream. The social enterprises add more: every coffee sold at Neighbourly Coffee and every shirt printed at Neighbourly Print is money circulating inside the community rather than draining out of it.
Compare that with the alternative. A person experiencing chronic homelessness is among the most expensive citizens a city can have — not because of who they are, but because of how the system treats them: emergency room visits, police interventions, shelter nights, crisis calls. Study after study in Canada and abroad has found that providing stable, supportive housing costs public systems less than leaving people on the street. LeBrun, the businessman, understood this before LeBrun the philanthropist did. "In business, as you succeed, investments increase," he said. Treating housing as an investment rather than an expense was, for him, simply rational.
Inside the tiny homes
Step through the private entrance of one of these homes and the word "tiny" starts to feel misleading. Each house measures around 240 square feet — compact, certainly, but complete: a full kitchen, a three-piece bathroom, a living space that doubles as a bedroom, and a small private deck out front where residents gather on warm evenings. Solar panels sit on the roofs, trimming energy costs and giving the little streets their distinctive look.
The homes are pre-built to a consistent, dignified standard — no two are shabby, none feel temporary. That was deliberate. LeBrun's team understood something that policymakers sometimes miss: the physical quality of a home sends a message to the person living in it. A place that looks and feels permanent tells its resident, "You are worth permanence."