"It sounds like you agree with me"

Maybe!

"but still would prefer UBI"

I certainly do, as it is the fair thing to do, if we consider the Land (=economic opportunity).

"because it gives you money you can choose where to spend."

(edit:) Not just that, also because it is the fair thing to do, because we all can command and form the Land for our own devices. Coming first to tell everyone what to do if they want to use the Land is not something I approve of as sole rationale to command Land.

"As a builder of houses, would it be easier/cheaper for me to build you a tiny house over a couple of weekends"

"or pay $400 to you every month so that you could rent a room for the rest of your life?"

Whether you pay rent for the rest of your life more or less depends on who owns the Land that the house is on, who owns the tools and IP used to build the house, and what you and the other person come to agree on. You cannot put a fixed price on what someone else's contribution costs you, and it's not just other people's labor that affect price.

The cost of the labor of someone else might be very little, or a lot. The fees on tools and the land that you pay towards parties that you owe nothing, or towards the community, might be little, or a lot.

So I cannot conclusively answer that. But if you have a stake in the Land, it might come out cheaper to live more Land efficiently and use your stake in the Land in other ways you enjoy more. So it makes sense to e.g. live in ways that use little Land (vertical building), or in less popular cities (Detroit), if there's a nationwide UBI (and ideally a land value tax(LVT)) in place. Depending on whether or not you care about the location specific advantages of living in NY or not, you might get more value out of your stake in the Land by living vertically in Detroit and spending the money online one way or another, or to develop the local community there. Or you might get more value out of spending more money on greater Land rent towards private owners and/or the community, if you appreciate NY for a reason or another.

If there's no nationwide LVT, you might actually see more cost efficient living wherever the cities chose to have an LVT in place, so you save money you can spend in other ways, while supporting a city that knows how to control rent effectively.

"As the person who needs a place to live, do you prefer the tiny house or the room that you rent? Does either provide better shelter?"

It's all subjective, we can just bring to the individual the facts of what it costs, what the opportunity costs to live in this or that location are, using this or that method, and give choice, so the individual can chose which cost factors that accompany opportunity, are worth it.

"The ability to say, "take this job and shove it" is the same as your ability to feed, cloth and house yourself for the near future. Whether it is UBI, or to have those things directly provided is pretty much irrelevant."

Not at all actually. We live in a world where industry leaders increasingly command the Network Effect. If you want to gainfully participate, like most of us do at a time or another, you will have to make yourself dependent on those who command rather more of the network effect than less, or you will have to spend rather more on advertisement than less, if you want to bring real competition from outside. The figures in earlier linked podcast make a rather clear case for something along those lines going on, probably. This kind of increasing Land, economic opportunity concentration, that is solely based on coming first to the market, that's something to address with policy. The tax and dividend approach is easiest to deploy and effective.

"So, what reasons do you have that you prefer UBI over the basic needs?"

1 ) It is increasingly needed advertisement budget if real competition is desired. It's a stake in the Land. Alternatively, make google/facebook give people free advertisment budgets or what? But that just strengthens their monopoly position. I'd rather want to see other platforms and private people be able to tap into this budget, too, if the individual sees an opportunity in alternative advertisment avenues.

2 ) It allows people to observe the costs in different locations and methods for themselves, rather than being just given, remaining ignorant of the actual costs.

3 ) And from 2 ), then allows people to use their person specific valuation, valuations that objectively vary from person to person, of those location and method specific differences, to chose sometimes cheaper but less opportune, or more expensive but more opportune.

Note that in the production of oneself, of fellow people, of community, and of joy, there's an extreme amount of factors to consider that are very person specific.

4 ) From the realization that by nature, we can come to use the Land economically in production of ourselves, each other, community and joy, it seems sensible to have a nonforfeitable claim towards the land, for also that purpose. So that is a thing the paid out sum provides, considering it can be fully converted into Land access, if we chose to tax the Land to go along with that.

The UBI as a right to command Land isn't just about being free to not starve. It's also about being free to gainfully participate as one sees fit, and to enjoy, to whatever extent a modest stake in the Land enables.

edit: fleshed out the LVT part a bit. Some spellchecking/grammar.