Podcast: Marcel LeBrun On His Plan To Build 96 ‘Tiny Homes’ In Fredericton
Marcel LeBrun is best known as a tech entrepreneur, a former executive at Radian6 and Salesforce.
But he’s also a very active and engaged member of his community. He was the very first guest on the Home Office podcast in April of 2020. LeBrun and David Alston joined Mark Leger to chat about their proposal to safely reopen the economy in the early days of the pandemic.
Well, LeBrun is back, this time as a social entrepreneur talking about his latest venture – a plan to build 96 tiny homes on the north side of Fredericton.
In addition to providing affordable housing to people in need, the development will have a social enterprise centre that will include a cafe, retail shop, offices and community spaces.
Residents will have access to drug treatment programs, job skills and entrepreneurial training programs and counselling support services.
LeBrun’s project focuses on the homeless and people in unstable living situations. But our conversation touches on housing issues generally and the challenges people are facing with increased rents across the region.
“We talk about what’s the purpose of business. Is it to generate profit or improve the state of the world? More and more businesses are seeing that they have a mandate that’s bigger than just making profits. Having said that, in real estate, it seems like that’s what’s driving things,” says LeBrun.
“But there are some models that are emerging that are trying to be a little more affordable by design. I really think that special-purpose organizations that are not for profit are really the way to address it because you’re going to get more than just a house.”
Listen to Mark’s conversation with Marcel in the player above or on platforms like Apple or Spotify.
Check out the Huddle podcast archive for more conversations about Atlantic Canadian culture and economy, including feature interviews with entrepreneurial people like David Myles, Bryana Ganong and Frank McKenna. And please go to podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple, search for “Huddle Home Office” and subscribe.
“Home Office” is part of a Huddle podcast network that includes Insights, hosted by Don Mills and David Campbell.