You can live where ever you want. You can fly for free, space available, but you need to be at the place your trip starts ready to put in a days work at the beginning of your trip. Commuting is on your time, not the companies, so it takes away from your time off.
Times are bad in aviation right now, but the business goes in a cycle with the economy. Personally, I don't think there is a bad time to get in the biz if you want to be a pilot bad enough. There are sacrifices and no guarantees. If you can live with that, you'll be fine.