Red Deer Homeless Foundation’s Project Nexus advancing towards construction
Published 3:56 pm Friday, October 2, 2026
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After years of struggling with opiate addiction and living on the streets of Vancouver when he was young, Joe Roberts says his recovery began with a few kind words of encouragement and access to services.
“Once I found the doorway to all the different things that I needed to move my life forward, things began to move really, really quickly,” Roberts told an audience of more than 400 at Red Deer Homeless Foundation’s Leadership Luncheon, held at the Exhibition Hall at Westerner Park on Oct. 2.
Twelve years later, Roberts was featured on the cover of Canadian Business as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country. He went on to lead the Push for Change movement and actually pushed a grocery cart 9,064 km across Canada in 2016 to raise funding and awareness to assist homeless youth.
He said homelessness is big and complex, but today people are working together on the issue.
“When organizations share resources and collaborate together, we’ve got a better chance of building capacity and bringing all those services together in one place,” said the humanitarian and author.
The Leadership Luncheon, hosted by Red Deer Homeless Foundation in collaboration with Dress for Success Central Alberta and the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre, was an opportunity to strengthen community connections and work together as progress continues on Red Deer’s homeless shelter and social care campus Project Nexus.
Darcy Mykytyshyn, Red Deer Homeless Foundation CEO, said the foundation is hoping to start construction on Project Nexus in the next 60 days, and there is a good chance the shelter will be open to clients sometime this winter.
“The best way to help people experiencing homelessness is to make it easier to get out of homelessness. One of the challenges they face, not only in our community but every community, is having to navigate between different services in order to get the support they’re looking for,” said Mykytyshyn.
“What Project Nexus does is create a campus whereby we have all of the services that people need to access in one place — housing, food, counselling, support services, education, job training.”
He added Project Nexus is considered leading-edge, and communities in Alberta and Canada are watching.
Roberts said since 1989 when he left the street, social media and news cycles have sensationalized homelessness, with people on opposing sides of what to do.
“Over the last 10 years, there’s visceral for or against. It’s even become a political football,” Roberts said.
He said some people don’t want their tax dollars to go to support those they say have made poor life choices. But people who have never experienced homelessness, or don’t know anyone who has, are unaware that homelessness or substance use disorder is likely the result of childhood trauma, generational trauma, or mental health issues.
As a child, Roberts was left with unresolved grief after his father died, and he was kicked out of the house at 15 by his abusive alcoholic step-father.
He said providing support to people on the street will reduce the costs to communities in the long-term.
“It’s either pay now or later. It’s just going to grow and continue to bleed municipal and provincial and federal coffers dry.”