Unless you live in one of several places where public transport isn't actually bad. (Within a half dozen miles of a city, on the west coast, or in New England).
Of course, those places also tend to have higher base costs of living, so the benefit of "not needing a car" could well be a wash financially. Of course, under certain circumstances, cars would be a better baseline than a fixed shelter, hands down.
I'd argue phone and internet access are at least as much a necessity for a great many jobs, though mostly for acquiring them and you mostly just need access rather than ownership.
And woops, I think I've gotten off topic.
So, uh... yeah... a better sort of welfare system might help with drugs? I don't know. It's generally not the physical/monetary poverty that lead people to spend their time getting wasted, to abuse drugs instead of just occasionally using them, in my experience, (although it often leads to that) - it's the social poverty and the poverty of opportunity. The community, in large part. It's the lack of any realistic alternatives in the pursuit of happiness.
Providing the base necessities won't do much about this, and certainly won't encourage people to try for more - for that, you need to give them a reasonable belief that "more" is actually obtainable. After all, it's a hell of a lot easier to settle for less than do what you believe to be impossible, especially when the cost of striving is high.