Oh that first photo is heartbreaking. 😥 I'm glad there are neighborhood cats who know they can come to you.
We have strays sometimes here, and sometimes they are found to have been obviously been on the street a long time, but on the other hand, people are so keen to help a stray that often they will take someone's indoor/outdoor cat (a cat that has a home, but is allowed outside to wander the neighborhood) to the shelter, and then the human has to pay a fee ($90, according to a recent post I saw) to get their cat back!
There was one post on social media of someone sharing their cat photo and saying "please don't take him to the shelter, he has a home, I just had to pay a lot of money," and this other guy chimed in that that had happened to his cat so many times he couldn't afford the fees (hundreds of dollars!).
It is more common to keep cats indoors in cities here (my cat Yuan is an indoor cat), but it's gotten to the point that people don't seem to think anyone lets their cat out on purpose. A couple of times I've seen a cat and wasn't sure, I waited until I saw a person and said, "Hey, do you know this cat? He lives in the neighborhood and isn't lost?" And they said yeah so I knew the cat was fine. People usually know their neighbor cats, I wish people would just ask if they aren't sure!
Indeed it was.
We don't have shelters here so strays are just left to wander around. But there are org actively helping these animals.