Food pantries around here are heavily locked up when they are closed because of vandals. Not people desperate for food, but people who will just break in to smash everything.

And they are very restrictive about how much people are allowed to take because otherwise you get rich fucks "slumming it" and coming in and buying up everything for half the price in the grocery store.

Unfortunately my cynicism is coloured by my experiences working in these sorts of places. There's no way you could just have a food pantry fridge on a street around here for people to help themselves to without it being ruined by some shithead. It could be different in other parts of the country, I'm in an area with a lot of suburbs, a lot of atomisation, so other places could actually be better for this.