GoFundMe figures reveal thousands rely on site to avoid homelessness

There have been nearly 300,000 GoFundMe campaigns in the US related to homelessness over the last three years. Some see it as a sign of a broken social system and dwindling options for those in need

Dave Schulman's long decline toward homelessness began 18 years ago, when, as a reserve police officer in southern California, he fell from a wall and seriously injured his neck during a response to a robbery call. In the years that followed, he lost his ability to work, his wife left him and the bank foreclosed on his Costa Mesa house. Depressed and in constant pain, he has recently been on the verge of losing the trailer that he now calls home, because his truck broke and he could no longer move it from place to place.

But Schulman's luck changed in January, when a former police colleague recognized that he was on the edge of losing everything and organized a GoFundMe fundraising campaign