Yeah that's what I mean, you see people living together, couch surfing, etc.
In my state, you can get very basic medical care if you're signed up for the program and you pay something like a $15 fee when you see the doctor. That's only for the very poor though. I think there may be a monthly charge too, I don't remember.
You get food stamps, which is actually a card loaded with a certain amount of money. The merchant will only sell you things on an approved list, but that list includes just about any unprepared food (so you can buy an uncooked "bring it home and cook it yourself" pizza, or a bottle of soda, but you can't buy a cooked pizza). It's something like $120 a month they give you for that. You might have to use it every month, I dunno. Also, to determine whether you qualify for food stamps, they count the total income of everyone you live with. So if you live with a bunch of people who are on food stamps, each has a work income of zero (they may be paid "under the table" to avoid taxes though), then everyone can get food stamps.
Now, you get six people living in a flophouse kind of arrangement (Geek Commune? :P ) that's about $700 a month which is quite enough to feed everyone with food that someone has to cook. Of course, instead, people end up buying some junk food too so they're sort of malnourished. But it's not like you're hungry all the time if you're a meth user.
There are also programs you can get on for housing subsidies, but mostly only if you're a single woman or a family with kids. A single mother with three kids, last I heard, gets $800 a month in housing subsidy. But around here, a bad three-bedroom living space can cost more than that, so it doesn't cover everything.
You can also get a utility (electric, water, etc) subsidy, but it's only for a couple months at a time or something. I don't remember what was up with that.