I've done the math. I've lived here. I've financed years of study in the city on loans and been on Ontario Works at times at the start of my career. Your model is poorly constructed.
Just to be clear, I don't disagree with you that $21600 is too little to live on. But I mostly buy OP's numbers, which makes me wonder what I'm missing. Debt payments, maybe?
$350/food isn't bad estimate for Toronto - it would be hard to get below $250, even being very careful. So there is maybe a little to claw back there, but you'll want at least $100 for food outside the home too.
Also the rent number is too low for Toronto, assuming you don't add a commute beyond your metropass.
So yeah, $500 doesn't look that practical.
This isn't a budget for sustainable living, it's a best an emergency budget you can survive on for a bit.
Quick sanity check: there's zero medical costs. Zero clothing costs. Zero furniture costs. Zero moving expenses. Zero allowance for costs associated with sharing your place with 2 other people. Zero education or progression related investments. Zero capital expenditures on your computer (better hope it never fails, right?).
And that's just a taste. The model is SO wrong as to be laughable.
If you take 1860s unskilled worker wage and spend it all on food, you'll get about as much as you could with SNAP benefits (~$130/month) today. The UBI is already here, it's just our standards have rose significantly.
Pre-made Tasty Bites are like 2.40 and you can throwthem on a bed of rice and eat 3 meals for $10 a day.
And if you cook yourself and eat mostly vegetarian or cheap meats you can easily get your per meal costs into the $2 range.
I know the rent is more expensive, in Houston you can easily get a ~800 sq ft 1 br 8 minutes from downtown in a nice neighborhood for $850. If you live in a 2 br with roommates or an efficiency you can get that down to $400-$500.
I used to live, fairly recently, on a hard limit of $10 per day for food - I did not eat out (almost never). It was enough to bulk up on (over 4000 calories), was balanced, and even included the prices of some basic supplements I took. This was in an expensive area of the US, that per a quick search is roughly on par with Toronto.
$11.60 seems like it could cover a days food in most, if not all, North American cities. You have to be diligent about budgeting, where you shop, what you buy, etc. But it can be done.
You might be able to swing it for a few months and not die, but that's not really any way to live.
