This is such a wonderful story that could warm even the coldest of hearts, and I really hope lots of people get behind this crowdtilt campaign :-)
There's good in most things bad, but those things are still mostly bad. People share the positive focus because it's more socially acceptable, and when you're in dire straits, you need to be socially acceptable. (I don't, so I don't fear addressing the truth with anyone who will hear it.)
The truth is that he bought into a dying society (Hollywood, about 5-10 years further along the decline curve than VC-funded so-called "tech") and faced severe age discrimination, because the old and young are the first to bite it when shit goes bad. He also made some big mistakes (8 kids, shallow wife that dropped him) but I still don't see how anyone could watch a man that capable get fucked that bad and not conclude that this is a failing society approaching uselessness and abandon.
The thing that always strikes me about homelessness is not its remoteness, but rather how it seems that any one of us are only a few unfortunate events and wrong moves away being in the gutter, and how most people feel that it could never happen to them. I find David's account brutally honest, enjoyable and yes, uplifting because it shows that there is a real (albeit long and painful) route out of the damning poverty of homelessness, not because of any particularly joyful spin that he puts on his story.
Is he making it uplifting because he's desperate and he wants people to help him? I don't think that's the overriding reason, but maybe, who knows? At any rate, if he's managed to pull himself so far out of the lows that he's able to adopt that strategy rather than just accept a life of homelessness that just happens to him then fair play - he deserves every success he can find.
Decades from now, when the average age of the contemporary HN crowd is 50, if people here are facing the age discrimination of the world that the current VC-istan demigods created, I bet the current crop of HN libertarians will be the first to be up in arms about it.