Yeah, of course you can do it and no you don't need to lower your expectations - £1000 is easily doable for nearly any city/conurbation. If you need money now (which your post implies), get yourself onto Jobserve and start chasing all those PHP/JS contracts. Some devs hate recruitment agencies, but they can be a contractors best friend for cash flow; hard to do less than £250 per day in the UK, great for getting cash.

Also, while its hard to swallow long term esp. if you have a family, there is always the option of relocating for a couple of months.