The desperation that brought USC dean, Mark Ridley-Thomas together
Ridley-Thomas is accused of continuing to lean on Sherin into 2018. In July of that year, county supervisors unanimously. Sherin is a potential witness in Ridley-Thomas’ criminal trial, scheduled for March. Jim Zenner, a former homeless veteran whom Sherin mentored and now works for the county mental health department, said there was an exodus of staff members who resisted his efforts.“He said we need psychiatrists to go out in the street; the positions were funded by the state and he still couldn’t get it through,” Marston said. “He had an organizational chart that took months, if not years, to approve.
From the start, some experienced service providers doubted that the model would work as well in Los Angeles. Trieste, a city of 200,000 nestled on the Adriatic coast in Italy’s northeastern tip, has no raging meth epidemic and no housing crisis. Dave Pilon, who wrote the Trieste grant application, said the proposal hinged on operating outside Medicaid, which is notorious for drowning staffers in paperwork. Working with Medicaid funding typically eats up 25% to 35% of staff members’ time with record-keeping and documentation, he said.