New BrunswickHousing Minister David Hickey says the emergency fund came from discussions of the Ministerial Taskforce on Homelessness and is aimed at the rapid creation of housing for people who are currently sleeping rough. Projects with non-profits are expected to be announced soon.Silas Brown · CBC News · Posted: Oct 14, 2025 2:49 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours agoHousing Minister David Hickey says the new funding will help support emergency supportive housing. (Mikael Mayer/SRC)New Brunswick’s minister responsible for housing has announced $7.4 million to spur the construction of more transitional housing units. David Hickey says the fund came from discussions of the Ministerial Taskforce on Homelessness with the goal of rapidly creating housing for people who are currently sleeping rough. “This is that interim funding to make sure we can get projects out the door faster, to make sure we can get more housing built in the interim so folks have a solution that’s not a tent in the middle of the winter,” Hickey said Tuesday.The money is not intended to create shelter beds, Hickey said, but to help speed up the efforts of non-profits that are building what’s known as supportive or transitional housing. Units built by Neighbourly Homes include a single bed, a desk and an iPad. There are also communal showers and bathrooms on site. (Silas Brown/CBC)The terms refer to housing for homeless people that is often composed of single units, with some shared communal spaces, with additional services provided. The units are intended to be a temporary stopping point to more permanent housing. Marcel LeBrun, the founder of Neighbourly Homes, said the new fund will help organizations like his speed up the pace at which they can construct their housing developments. “The funding just helps us to execute quickly, find areas that are adequate, but maybe need some investment capital or water and sewer infrastructure, that kind of thing,” he said.“So the committee has announced this emergency funding to just help these projects move along quickly.”Marcel LeBrun says the fund should be able to help non-profit organizations build units faster. (Silas Brown/CBC)Neighbourly Homes, an offshoot of the 12 Neighbours community in Fredericton, has already built a 28-unit “rapidly deployable, courtyard-style housing model” in Saint John, with another being built now. LeBrun is hopeful the funding will support another of the Neighbourly Courtyards in Fredericton and says he is ready to build new modular communities wherever there is need across the province. “When you’re in crisis mode, it costs more,” he said. “You have to spend more to do crisis response.“It’s kind of like forest-fire fighting. You’ve got to be able to get the fire under control. So that’s what, you know, led us to this idea of these bridge units, because they’re fast, they’re low-cost. You can get the kind of the storm calmed and get people in there.”According to the Human Development Council, 1,529 people in Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John were homelessness at least one day in March of this year. That’s a large jump from the 493 in a similar survey from March 2021.The ministerial taskforce was struck in September, with a goal to reduce homelessness by 40 per cent by 2029. Hickey said this was one of the first recommendations to come from it and looks to address the most acute needs while work continues to build more permanent affordable housing.“These are meant for supportive housing in a temporary measure, while we can continue to build the larger scope of our transitional units into our permanent units,” he said.“This is really the emergency support in order to deal with the issues that communities are facing right now.”ABOUT THE AUTHORSilas Brown is a Fredericton-based video journalist. You can reach him at silas.brown@cbc.ca.
N.B. creates $7.4M fund to speed up creation of supportive housing
