What I wonder is why the phrase "no strings attached" has to be applied to the project. What if there were strings? We don't become better as a society by giving free money and saying "have a nice day!" We become better by meeting need. Financial security is a need, for sure, but so are many other things that might go along with finances (budgeting, child care, bills, grocery shopping...). Some might not know how to do these things (I did say some, not all), and would benefit from case management to assess that. Left to our own devices, what's really being solved if these other needs are still present? Stockton, California isn't the first place I think of when someone mentions fiscal security. The report mentioned that most are living well below the median income level.
Language is so powerful, and paints a picture that looks good (No strings attached!!! No-one looking over your shoulder!!!), but why do we frame it that way? I fail to see the issue with asking "where is your greatest need, and how can we assist you to meet that need?"
A few things here.
Firstly, by definition, 50% are below the median. It's the very definition of what the median is. It makes for shock headlines if you rely on people not knowing because "half of people have below average income" is the kind of thing that can be used to rouse up the rabble to insist that Something Must Be Done when the very definitions used mean that nothing will ever change. The mean is more prone to be skewed - if you're using mean income then Bill Gates walking into bar makes everybody a multimillionaire, on average. The mean moves sharply when he walks in, the median won't shift anywhere near as sharply.
Throwing money at problems is just what government does. It's about all government can do. It's all well and good teaching people how to budget but different people have different priorities. You might be saving up for a fancy sports car while I think a sports car is a waste of money because I'd rather travel the world. You might think that's a waste of money. Understanding basic household economics is the sort of thing that should be taught in schools rather than left until later when maybe some government program or another will help people address a lack of basic life skills.
Meeting needs is complex. I think of people I've known over the years. Like the elderly widow who lived alone, who didn't have a lot of money (sometimes barely enough to get by) but she was OK with that - her biggest problem was losing physical mobility and finding it harder to get around. Or the guy whose wife died who literally had more money than he knew what to do with (his wife had a huge life insurance policy he didn't know about until she died) but was desperately lonely. Or the couple who endlessly fought over money because she was prone to waste it in one area while he wasted it in another, while both blamed the other for their financial situation. There's not much that can be done for the first person because even if you got the things she needed delivered to her door that doesn't help with the fact she struggles to get out and socialize. The second person needed human company, something government programs are bad at dealing with. The third needed a combination of financial advice and marital counseling.
Case management sounds good in theory but would rapidly become just another money pit that failed to offer anything like value for money. One fundamental problem is that the people who use welfare as a safety net while they get themselves sorted out aren't the problem, and the people who use welfare as a lifestyle choice because it's easier to just game the system than go out and work will just continue to game the system. It's not even as if making sure people are trying to find work achieves much - I've known business owners despair at the appalling quality of candidates they have seen turn up for interviews, wasting everybody's time because they had to prove they were "looking for work" to get their free money. So they'd show up late, make no attempt to impress the interviewer and make it clear during the interview they had no interest in the job at all, but every letter that said "thank you for your time, however we regret to inform you..." counted as "proof" they were looking for work. In the meantime the people who are genuinely trying to find work have their time wasted by being expected to prove it, when they would rather stay busy job hunting.
ETA: It's actually quite hard to enforce giving away money with strings attached. You've probably seen the kind of person who gets to the checkout with a cart piled high with junk food and then pays with their food stamps. Even if you could enforce some kind of system whereby food stamps couldn't be used for junk food it's virtually impossible to stop someone buying things that are covered by their food stamps, selling them on for cash at a discount, then using the money to buy junk food. All it means is that someone who doesn't qualify for food stamps gets a benefit from food stamps and the person who does qualify gets a bit less junk food.
