Yeah, and I lived in condemned housing as an undergrad. So what.Of course you can. You can't support a family of 4 on MW (nor should you), but you can. Minimum wage is meant for jobs to be held by students or those getting their first job experience, usually while living with parents.
You can do it though, as a single. I used to eat for around $10/week while paying $400/mo for an apartment while I did a $7/hour internship at the end of college. This was my shopping list at Wal-mart in an average week in 2002:
1 loaf bread - .50
1 pack hot dogs - .50
1 pack hot dog buns - .50
1 bag lettuce (re-closable) - $2.50
1 pack generic kraft singles $1.50
sometimes a pack of mini carrots - don't recall price
several bananas - I don't recall the price.
I kept ranch, peanut butter, and ketchup available
I drank tap water usually
I cooked hot dogs and grilled cheese sandwiches on one of those george foreman grills.
Poor? yes. Unlivable? certainly not.
The problem is that people falsely believe they should be able to support a family on a single minimum wage income. Nope, not in America (not anywhere). That's not what minimum wage jobs are for.
It's fun to live in ghetto conditions for a brief interval when you know you are just "passing through."
It's disgusting to argue that that's how people ought to live, just because you spent a little while slumming it and you survived or didn't find it too hard.