In 2020, Andrew Velikanje was living in a tent on Haskell’s Beach after leaving a toxic relationship. After a few days, he got fed up with being associated with the abandoned trash, bike parts and other items left behind, so he started walking a mile to a large trash bin at The Ritz-Carlton Bacara resort in Santa Barbara to clean up the site.

“In doing that, I started really falling in love with removing trash from nature,” Velikanje said. “I’d always done it, even as a kid. I’d go fishing and find a pile of crap on the lake bed and just pick it up.”

From there, Velikanje wanted to take on some bigger projects and began picking up trash along Highway 154. It wasn’t long before people started to take notice. 

Six years later, Velikanje is the man behind Earthcomb, a litter removal and homeless outreach company based in Goleta that employs homeless people for trash cleanups. Since its founding, Earthcomb has been responsible for cleaning more than 480,000 pounds of litter and waste from local communities, including beaches, encampments and along highways.

After he had to leave Haskell’s Beach, he camped at a spot near the Santa Barbara Cemetery until he got a call from Sharon Byrne, who at the time was the executive director of the Montecito Association.

Byrne told Velikanje that he had to leave his camp, but she offered to put him up in a hotel. Velikanje said at that point, he was reluctant to accept help or have hope for a better future.

“The first thing to go when you actually accept that you’re homeless is that hope that you won’t be anymore,” Velikanje said. “You just gotta succumb to it. It’s a level of powerlessness and humility that I never thought I would reach.”

That night, Velikanje said he and Byrne spoke for hours about his ideas for Earthcomb. That was the last night he spent in a tent. From there, he moved into the Rose Garden Inn before eventually getting an office space that he would live in for two years until he got his own apartment 14 months ago.

Today, the Montecito Association still employs Velikanje to pick up trash and encampments around Montecito. 

“He’s a go-getter, he’s a hard worker and he really cares about the community,” said Houghton Hyatt, current executive director of the Montecito Association. “People will send me photos of garbage on the side of the road, an abandoned mattress, a rug or something, so we’re able to ping Andrew and he’ll just go get it, which is awesome.”

Not long after he started working with the Montecito Association, he got a call from Hillary Hauser, co-founder of Heal the Ocean, a local nonprofit organization focused on maintaining clean ocean water. 

Hauser had seen the work Velikanje did at Haskell’s Beach and hired him to do more work in 2021 before king tides were set to come in and wash an encampment’s debris out to sea. Since then, Heal the Ocean has partnered with Earthcomb to tackle trash cleanups at more than 30 abandoned homeless encampments. 

Hauser said she sees Velikanje as a Robin Hood-like fairytale character for all the work he’s done.

“It’s a miracle story,” Hauser said. “As far as I’m concerned, this fell into our lap. I saw a gift land in my lap, and it was just so obvious that this was a blessing to all of us on all sides.”

Working with Heal the Ocean was a full circle moment for Velikanje, who did a school project on the organization when he was younger.

“I did a story on them the year they were founded. Then, some 24 years later, after loving their work and being a fan of them for so long, I’m considered part of their team,” Velikanje said. “It’s just beautiful. If I think about it too hard, I end up getting really emotional.”

Since he started Earthcomb, Velikanje got a contract with the Isla Vista Community Services District to clean up around Isla Vista twice a week for a year, worked with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office on homeless encampments, managed wetland properties, and cleaned up for Old Spanish Days. He also became a certified peer advocate for people in crisis. 

He recently received a grant to clean out the Santa Ynez riverbed, which he hopes to be able to use to hire five homeless people for the job.

While he does a lot of the work himself, when he gets larger contracts he’s able to hire other individuals to be a part of cleanup jobs. Since starting Earthcomb, he has employed 24 formerly homeless people referred to him by City Net and AmeriCorps.

“There were 24 more terminally homeless people in Santa Barbara County than there are now,” Velikanje said. “I like seeing that there’s been a bit of a difference. That’s my favorite part.”

However, while cleaning up encampments and seeing homeless people be told they have to move, Velikanje said he can’t help but feel a sense of guilt. 

“Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m not doing enough,” Velikanje said. “When I first moved into my place, I really struggled with the guilt of it, that I’m going out there into the fields and I’m walking alongside the sheriffs for their outreach and watching these people get asked to leave.”

However, he said he also sees his lived experience with homelessness as the thing that sets him apart from other outreach programs. 

“I know what it’s like to not have hope. I know what it’s like to not be able to trust a single soul on the planet,” Velikanje said. “I’m able to bring a potency to the team, to the initiative, because of my lived experience. It’s a really humbling occupation for me.”