Andrew Lamb, Founder of Sober Living Riches

Andrew Lamb's path to sober living didn't begin in recovery, or even in housing. It began in a classroom. He taught school, then spent more than a decade in real estate, building and leading sales teams and eventually co-owning a brokerage in Vacaville, California. He wanted to build something that lasted, which sent him looking for a better way to invest.

He found it in an unlikely place. A house he'd lined up to flip, he opened as a sober living home instead. He opened his first homes during the upheaval of 2020 and 2021, took one rental producing about $600 a month and turned it into roughly $6,000 as a sober living home in under 90 days, then built the systems to repeat it. Today he operates 18 sober living homes across California. Those homes grew 891% in three years, enough to land at No. 395 on the 2026 Inc. 5000. Growth like that comes down to demand. There are far more people needing a bed than there are people willing to house them, and that gap keeps widening.

What makes the model work is relationships. Andrew has partnered directly with counties, the state, and health insurers to house hundreds of people across California in his own homes. That work has brought in more than $1.3 million in California state funds and about $2 million more from health plans, and made him a vocal affordable-housing advocate.

An 82-year-old man spent 40 years in prison. He just got the keys to a place of his own. A husband and father of five, Andrew built Sober Living Riches to hand the full playbook to others, and the community he's built has created more than 4,000 verified sober living beds across the country. That's the heart of gold inside the logo: more safe, stable homes, and more people with a place to rebuild their lives.

“My kids and I are stable, safe, and thriving.”

A mother who lived in one of the homes