His story is not unique at the village — it is, in a real sense, the template. Housing first, then work, then the slow rebuilding of confidence. LeBrun has a favourite way of describing the philosophy: "A lot of our systems provide support when someone showcases their deficits. Then, as they progress towards success, the supports fall away. In business, as you succeed, investments increase. How can we structure things so people can unlock benefits as they succeed, as opposed to having to showcase their deficits?"
It is a businessman's critique of the welfare bureaucracy, and it cuts to the heart of why 12 Neighbours feels different from a shelter. Nobody here has to perform their brokenness to keep their bed. The supports grow as the person grows.
Answering the critics
No project this ambitious escapes criticism, and 12 Neighbours has its sceptics. The most common objection is philosophical: is it better to build a separate village for people experiencing homelessness, or to reintegrate them into ordinary neighbourhoods across the city? Some advocates argue that clustering vulnerable people together risks creating a ghetto, however well-designed, and that true inclusion means scattered-site housing in mixed communities.
LeBrun's answer is pragmatic rather than ideological. He believes that for many people coming off the street — particularly those dealing with addiction or severe trauma — there is genuine value in a community of people who understand what they are going through, combined with on-site support and the dignity of a place of one's own. The gated design, the enterprise centre, the peer community: all of it is aimed at creating what he calls "a dignified micro home community" rather than an institution.
There is also the question of scale. Ninety-six homes, however beautifully built, cannot house every person experiencing homelessness in New Brunswick. LeBrun has never claimed otherwise. His argument is that 12 Neighbours is a proof of concept — a working demonstration that the problem is solvable, and a model that other cities can adapt. Early signs suggest the idea is travelling: the model is now being studied and replicated in other Canadian communities wrestling with the same crisis.
There is also the question of scale. Ninety-six homes, however beautifully built, cannot house every person experiencing homelessness in New Brunswick. LeBrun has never claimed otherwise. His argument is that 12 Neighbours is a proof of concept — a working demonstration that the problem is solvable, and a model that other cities can adapt. Early signs suggest the idea is travelling: the model is now being studied and replicated in other Canadian communities wrestling with the same crisis.
It is worth noting that the "housing first" philosophy behind the village is not LeBrun's invention. Finland's nationally celebrated Housing First program has dramatically reduced long-term homelessness over the past fifteen years by doing exactly what the name says: giving people homes without preconditions, then wrapping support around them. What LeBrun did was translate that philosophy into a built form suited to a small Canadian city — factory-built, community-shaped, and fast.
A crisis that keeps growing
To understand why 12 Neighbours matters, it helps to understand the backdrop. Canada's housing crisis has moved far beyond Toronto and Vancouver. Over the last two decades, the country's average home price has increased by more than 200 percent, according to reporting in Maclean's. In small cities like Fredericton, where wages are lower and the social safety net thinner, unaffordability has arrived with a quiet brutality.
The traditional responses — emergency shelters, short-term motel stays, years-long public housing waitlists — keep people alive but rarely move them forward. Shelters, by their nature, are triage. What LeBrun built is something rarer: an actual destination, a place where the trajectory bends upward.
That is also why the project's construction model matters. By proving that dignified homes can be factory-built at a pace of one per week, 12 Neighbours challenges one of the most stubborn assumptions in housing policy: that building homes for the poorest must be slow, ugly, or impossibly expensive. Modular, volunteer-assisted construction will not solve the national crisis on its own. But it reframes what is possible.
Lessons for the rest of Canada
Perhaps the most important thing 12 Neighbours built was not made of wood and solar panels at all. It built an argument — one with foundations, walls, and a roof — that the homelessness crisis is not a force of nature but a series of choices, and that different choices produce different results.
For policymakers, the lessons are concrete. First, speed matters: factory-built modular housing can move at a pace traditional construction cannot match, and in a crisis measured in winters survived, pace is mercy. Second, dignity is not a luxury upgrade; the colourful paint, the porches, the café that welcomes outsiders are not decorative extras but functional parts of a design that tells residents they belong. Third, employment and housing must be built together, not in sequence — a job without an address is precarious, and an address without a purpose is only half a home.