I guess I did data consulting for one too many programs and read it as, "damn, that's going to be a hard outcome to work out and the data collection is going to be problematic. I hope they find someone who knows what their doing."

>It should be assumed that everyone gets to eat and have shelter.

Would this include intimacy?

Consider that babies who aren't physically touched suffer extremely high mortality rates even though all other needs are provided (to the extent that even studying the effect is banned as unethical). This alone shows that physical touch should be considered a need.

And then there is the topic of needing human emotional intimacy, where loneliness is shown to be very unhealthy.