I relate to your experience a lot, I've got so many similar stories!
Funnily enough we have very similar ideas on how to handle welfare (atleast when it comes to food). I also just think the food should be prepared and distributed on prem via religious institutions.
Thats the only model I've seen which is at least somewhat fraud resistant. For example, India is a notoriously low trust society where getting fast food is like rolling the dice with food poisoning but not with temples. You can get free healthy food from most religious institutions, nobody (ish) will mess god. Some of the best food I had during my time in India is from the church. I've never had food from hindu temples but I hear its the same. I know when travelling, the guides would always tell us to eat from brahmin (hindu version of orthodox jews) restaurants.
I'm tempted to say this should be extended to non profits too but in my experience non profits are like an opposite perpetual motion device designed to increase accelerate world entropy.
This is probably where our similarities end. I believe this model should apple to all forms of welfare and entitlements. All of it (incl Social Security & Medicare) should be scrapped and replaced with an essentials program.
This is basically what I was suggesting in the OP with the "if you commit to xyz, we will assist you". I think we should get very creative with XYZ too. community services comes to top of mind. It all comes down to the basic idea that none of this is free so it shouldn't be free for the recipients either.
Same goes for student loans, I think the program should be scrapped entirely and replaced with a different program where the money is a lump sum instead of a loan. The catch is military service or civil service. Maybe an reimagined form of USACE and a reimagined apprenticeship concept.
P.S. The coming across as a dick part is because you guys (HN) are the most smug self righteous group of people I've ever interacted with (South Park Smug Alert) and it messes with my autism because you guys are smart so you do the 1+1=2 thing yet when it comes to certain areas you just choose to completely shut off that part.
I mean we have service oriented architectures, separation of concerns, domain driven design, incentives, KPIs, resiliency, efficiency etc but when it comes to the real life (where it matters more since the non linear complexity) you guys are like lets scrap all of that and build the tower of babel, a big federal monolith which will be managed by either ladies/studs from HR/marketing (AOC, Greg Casar) or 80 year old MBA/Lawyer (Pelosi, Biden) types who are "not good with technology". Utopia Baby!
I mean how can a city of the smartest people in the world also think legalising petty crime and enabling public degeneracy & indecency is a great idea.