it’s not a “stipend”
it’s welfare, a handout...
Several parts of the story don’t fit well. If you hand out cash-cards monthly, and the guy/gal lives off the street in the mid-town area...probably 50-percent of the grocery stores have shutdown because of customer decline and theft. So the remaining stores might be open but they’ve upped their prices by 30-to-50 percent to make up for theft. So you walk in and buy a bag of food to survive three days, and find that what was $50 for the bag four years ago....is now $100 now.
The cash card will be empty by the end of the 2nd week of the month.
Add to this...one might find ways to trade the cash-cards to dealers...to get your daily fix.