Almost 65,000 people from all over the world will converge on Miami, Florida to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday.
In California, less than 3,000 miles away from South Beach, there are more than 90,000 homeless people in the state’s five largest counties. These counties spend an average of $40,000 per year on one homeless person, which amounts to $3.6 billion per year.
Yet American adults spend $14.8 billion collectively on food, drinks and merchandise for Super Bowl Sunday. If those funds were redirected to services for people without homes, it could cover the five California counties’ homeless spending for four years.
Data sources: The Guardian, SFGov.org, The Mercury News, Times of San Diego, Sacramento Bee, CNBC.com
Joe Dworetzky is pursuing a second career as a Masters student in Stanford’s Journalism program. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years. He represented private and governmental clients in hundreds of financial restructurings and commercial disputes. He served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and in that capacity, he led a 150-lawyer department responsible for all the city’s legal matters. From 2009 to 2013 Joe served as one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for the overall management of the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in cartooning. His first novel was published in 2013 by Indigo Sea Press and his short stories and creative non-fiction have appeared in dozens of literary magazines and journals. In 2018 he came to Stanford University as a fellow in the Distinguished Careers Institute, and his studies in that program kindled a passionate interest in journalism. He served as a staff writer and editorial cartoonist for The Stanford Daily and his reporting and editorial cartooning frequently appear in the Peninsula Press. In the summer of 2019, Joe worked on the metro desk of the L.A. Times as an intern. His wife, Amy Banse, is the managing director and head of funds for Comcast Ventures, San Francisco. They have four children ranging from 19 to 35 and live in San Francisco.
