Forest Hills Nonprofit Brings Christmas Aid To Homeless NYers

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Forest Hills duo Jeffrey Newman and Jayson Conner are giving hundreds of gifts this Christmas.

Newman and Conner, who founded the nonprofit Backpacks for the Street in 2018, will be handing out hundreds of sandwiches and backpacks stuffed with sleeping bags, coats, sneakers, toiletries, masks and hand sanitizer to New York City's unhoused population.

Their goal, Newman told Patch, is to "give people a little bit of Christmas cheer and joy along with food."

"These are people, too," Conner said.

Starting Christmas Eve and continuing through Christmas Day, the duo will distribute more than 500 sandwiches to homeless men and women across the city, as well as a thousand backpacks donated by Brevite and filled with wintertime and pandemic-era essentials.

Also included: Backpacks for the Street t-shirts donated by the Forest Hills-based business Something for Sophie.

Agora Taverna, a Greek restaurant on Austin Street, served as the nonprofit's hub for collecting all the donated items and food.

"Without knowing anything about us, they said yes the minute we asked," Conner said.

The Christmas initiative is the kind of work that Newman and Conner have been doing ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic — and long before that.

Backpacks for the Street has distributed 11,000 backpacks, 20,000 face masks and more than 220 gallons of hand sanitizer to homeless New Yorkers since March.

"Once Covid hit in March, we kind of went into overdrive," Newman said. "If there ever was a time to have compassion and kindness and put the homeless at the forefront, it's now."

Newman added, "If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that many of us are just one or two moments away from becoming homeless ourselves."