LOS ANGELES — For a brief period last year, Curtis Mayfield, 61, was one of Los Angeles County’s 66,000 homeless individuals. Now, he nurtures orchids to help him outgrow his pain. 

“I’ve been through a nightmare, being on the streets for three weeks. I slept on the sidewalk. I slept on a Santa Monica bench. I slept in the Subway Train stations, and I sleep all night on the bus, because I had nowhere to sleep,” he said.

The streets exacerbated his mental and physical illnesses. Mayfield ended up with pneumonia and an infection in his foot.

“I felt weak. I kept falling down in the street,” he said.

Mayfield spent months bouncing around from hospital to convalescent home to the streets, until the last time he was hospitalized.

“When the doctor came in the room he said, ‘we have a place for you to go.’ It was the Health Foundation,” said Mayfield.

The National Health Foundation (NHF) operates three recuperative care sites in Mid-City, Ventura, and Pico Union. NHF helped Mayfield and 1,100 other unhoused people last year by providing them with shelter post-hospitalization and with their medical care.

Antonio Tate is the director of recuperative care at NHF’s Pico-Union location. He said the center gives people the resources they need to heal.

“[We] monitor their blood pressure, their medication, their temperature, store their medication, refill their medication, and provide transportation to their doctor’s appointment,” said Tate.

The program helps people like Mayfield, and last year, it saved the healthcare system about $20 million by keeping people off the streets and out of the emergency room. 

“Many guests have shared that when they come here, how are they going to continue the care from the hospital here, and from here to the next place of living. Often, they feel like they do not have a place to store their personal belongings, [and] they lose paperwork. They lose documentation. [They] go out in the community, IDs get stolen, wallets get stolen. They lose their benefits. Those are the things that we help them set up, and we help them find a way to keep those resources going,” said Tate.

NHF also helps connect unhoused people with housing. Last year, 44% of their guests were able to transition to stable housing, according to the center. However, quarantine holds have made finding housing during COVID-19 more difficult.

Mayfield will soon complete his stay at the NHF’s Pico-Union location. He has healed from his foot and most importantly, from his heart.

“This place, it’s got a character to it that really makes you believe in yourself,” he said.

With the money he saved during his stay, he will be able to get an apartment and build himself a little home garden with orchids.