and this is the point, like mundharmonika says you could establish a decentralized and way more effective safety-net.
funds get locked into a smart contract. And the contract executes in the case that there is measurable demand. Directly into your wallet. The community can even elect a redistribution hub for homeless people. Lets say a multi-signature party consisting out of 4 coffee-shops, churches who ever is voluntarily acting as a hub. When 3 out of 4 report plus 1000 homeless people, --> the contract executes and the hubs gets the monetary resources. Right now there is lots of research in this field (mostly on the Ethereum Blockchain), like insurance against hurricanes and floods.
Centralized entities (like Washington, Moscow-Kreml or Brussels) are more efficient but not effective. The bureaucratic apparatus creates a massive overhead.