I don't dislike the idea of state/government subsidies for essentials. Most of that is already in place for many first world countries, in some way, shape, or form.

The problem I have with it is that you need to qualify for the assistance. So you need this whole complicated application and approval system, oversight to ensure that it's not being taken advantage of, either by the would-be clients, nor the administrative staff managing it, and then that needs to go into paying for housing and whatnot for eligible people, and yatta yatta.

All of that overhead goes away with UBI. Everyone gets it. There's no disability, no employment insurance, no disability benefits, nothing. If you have citizenship, you get UBI. The amount of UBI deducts from your regular work earnings, so businesses, and the rich are paying the majority of the ubi payouts, and the system is both simplified and streamlined. If you lose your job, or you need to be out of work for a while due to sickness, injury or other issue, no problem, you still get UBI, and nothing changes. You don't need to apply for disability or short term medical benefits because you now can't work, because that amount is your UBI.

Additionally, UBI should be tied to the cost of living and/or inflation, as costs rise, so does UBI.

In this way, you dramatically lower the administrative costs and overhead from running such a program, and citizens have peace of mind that they will always be able to afford the basics. Mainly rent, and food.

The market provides all of that to them, rather than needing a complex and approval based benefit system to provide it instead.

It's so hard to describe how many government services would end up getting folded into UBI. The obvious ones are unemployment services and/or welfare, disability benefits, both for long term and short term disabilities any bursaries or grants given to people for short duration assistance. A huge segment of government work would no longer be needed. And yeah, some of those people will end up unemployed, some will shift over to UBI work.... To their benefit, all those freshly unemployed workers have UBI now, so they don't need to worry about applying for unemployment benefits, they just need to focus on finding new employment if they choose to.

I could rant about it all day. I'll stop here.

I think a better solution would be state run essentials given out for free. Like food banks, free toiletries, social housing etc.

The problem with that without a UBI is that it dictates what people can economically access to whatever services are already provided. That said, I'm in favor of us getting essentials (Particularly inelastic demand things like Housing and Healthcare) and a UBI.

like corporations raising prices constantly to meet the new extra money supply.

People always bring up this point but the idea that prices are an arbitrary number selected by sellers isn't actually how the economy works. Wealth confers actual agency and leverage. If you have a UBI which functions somehow as redistribution of wealth (ie. funded by taxes on the rich or collective ownership of natural resources rather than by printing more dollars), that is an actual increase in people's negotiating power on the market, companies can't just unilaterally undo it or make buyer's choices for them.

state run essentials given out for free

While this would be much better than nothing and is the better option in specific cases like healthcare where markets are non-functional, something like state housing for the poor is more subject to political backlash. Someone who isn't in state housing and doesn't want to be will likely see it as a drain on their resources going to the "other" and seek to chip away or put degrading restrictions on it, while with a UBI a majority of people would be directly made more financially secure in a more efficient and flexible way, so ongoing political support for it could come from all of them.