Young entrepreneur flees California to build SWFL affordable housing leader

In the background of Andrew Cribbs’ office are three shovels. One is mounted on the wall, and on the handle it reads Bayshore Pines. 

“That’s our first property that’s actually in lease up now in north Fort Myers,” Cribbs says. “That’s a big one that gets a higher placement.” 

Photo by Mark Wemple

Cribbs may be a young leader in affordable housing in Southwest Florida, with his company, Onda Housing Group, but he ended up in that position through a series of career steps that didn’t necessarily have their logical end point here. He grew up in Chicago and went to Loyola University Chicago, where he met his wife. She dreamed of working in fashion and eventually got a job in New York at Giorgio Armani while Cribbs ended up in investment banking in Chicago. After a few moves, he was approached in Los Angeles by two brothers who wanted to start an affordable housing development company, which became Lincoln Avenue Communities. 

“I accepted an offer as the sixth employee of that company, which is now the largest affordable housing development company in the country,” he says. “We grew from the time I was there from about 1,500 units to over 20,000 units across the country.” 

That cemented Cribbs’ passion for affordable housing — he saw the vision and he saw the market need. But as he and his wife decided they were ready to start building a family, they thought of where they wanted to be. It wasn’t California. It was Naples, where her family lived. 

So in 2021, they packed their bags and moved. At first, Cribbs maintained his work for the California-based firm, but he felt a call to get more involved in the community, to do something entrepreneurial. Affordable housing was a possibility, but the timing was hard: Interest rates and construction prices were going up. 

“I realized I was going to need some more runway to build a business,” he said. “So I actually put a business plan together in affordable housing, recognizing the massive need in Southwest Florida particularly, where there are very high barriers, due to land costs, but it’s also the highest income area of the state of Florida.” 

Cribbs, to get going, approached the executives of the first family office he worked for in California with an opportunity: affordable housing in Naples and Fort Myers. Their company name was Fiume, which is river in Italian, and he decided to name his Onda Housing Group, which means wave.. 

Three years later, Cribbs says Onda has a $1.5 billion real estate development portfolio and about 2,700 units either built or in construction. He looks ahead to the future with excitement, knowing the market opportunities, given housing costs, are plentiful. But he also looks to the same future with a certain gravity. “I always try to make not the easy decision but the harder, right decisions,” he says. 

He credits his wife with being his biggest cheerleader and his biggest counselor. “She sees where things are going to end up while I’m still thinking about it,” he says. “She’s my No. 1 sounding board.”