If someone is living in a major city and lives some kind of alternative lifestyle and you cannot for the life of you figure out how they do it, the answer is almost always rich parents. Also, the grosser/more slovenly they try to present themselves, the more money their family has. Not even trying to be shady, and obviously there are exceptions.
I think this applies to any subculture.
for real. I can't begin to give a number to how many artist/musician weed trimming travelers I've encountered who I later learned have a trust fund or something like that. Supposedly they'd live off the money they made trimming for 3 months... I've only met a handful of people for whom that was actually the case. I met one girl whose Mom was the lead DA for a US state. Another whose dad was part owner of an oil drilling company. This one kid who didn't get money from his family, but knew that he'd be all set if he needed it because his parents had millions, just "bought" a house. Then there was this one white rasta kid who had been living on the run from a trafficking charge in Nebraska for 10 years. He decided he needed to get a real job, chopped his dreads, his real estate baron parents from Philly flew out, got him a lawyer, new car, clothes, etc. This one kid, oh man, I really didn't care for him much- this one dude grew up in Oakland. His parents owned a house that's worth a couple mil at this time. Dude's granddad was a SFPD guy and his grandmother was essentially giving him a significant portion of the pension or something like that. This kid was trying to be a full time anarchist and weed trimming gutter punk but drove a brand new Tacoma and "family friends" owned the land he would "work" on. No joke, this dude backs over a girls bicycle at the spot they all lived and instead of offering to fix/pay for it he says "you shouldn't have left it behind my truck."
I actually really appreciate and enjoy most of these people, but the choices and risks they took made a whole lot more sense and in turn seemed a lot less badass when I learned that they didn't have much to lose other than their pride if something went wrong.
As for living in a city, I don't know how people do it anymore. The period I lived on the edge of Boston, I had a full time job and a side job. Owned an inexpensive 18 year old car, had 4 roommates, and ate a lot of rice, beans, and lentils. Dumpstered my snacks from the donut shop. Didn't buy new shit, ever. That was a minute ago though and I was able to get a room for 650. I don't know what it's like right now.