GOTHAM'S LATEST NON-CRISIS

December 30, 2006 -- Food-pantry photo-ops are a holiday cliché for most politicians - and certainly there has been no shortage of such officials around town lately, helping hand out food to poor folks.

But surely they know quite well - or they should - that there is no hunger crisis in New York City.

None whatsoever.

Now, rank-and-file New Yorkers can be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given the messages from City Hall these days.

For starters, outgoing Human Resources Administration Commissioner Verna Eggleston, for the time being the city's top welfare official, recently bemoaned the fact that many HRA employees used soup kitchens and food stamps.

Then, City Council members proclaimed that the existence of some 8,000 city employees on food stamps means the city isn't paying a "living wage."

To top that off, Mayor Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn want to set up a new city "food-policy coordinator," elevating the issue into the bureaucratic stratosphere.

No wonder people think there's a hunger crisis. But, again - there isn't.

First of all, it's not surprising that HRA employs folks who use food stamps. The agency's job is to move people from welfare to work, and it provides many entry-level jobs to former welfare recipients.

These folks are in a transitional phase; they got food stamps before working for HRA and keep getting them for a period afterward.

And getting food stamps hardly means a person is paid bottom-of-the-barrel wages: Depending on family size, an individual can earn up to $40,000 a year - not counting the city's lush fringe-benefit packages - and still qualify.

So much for the idea that city workers are hung out to dry.

Still, the city has started yet another "outreach" campaign to inform residents that they qualify for food stamps - an effort to broaden the safety net even more. The city says some 440,000 people are eligible, but not enrolled.

C'mon, now. How hard is it, really, to give away free food?

Meanwhile, as city workers beg people to sign up and more enter the program, hunger advocates point to the growing food-stamp rolls as a sign of even greater hunger - and press for even more outreach. And funding.

Talk about circular logic.

Even a top Bloomberg aide says "the food conversation drives me crazy" - noting that the more money is spent, the more "hunger" seems to go up.

Indeed, a recent federal report shows just how rare hunger actually is in America: It found that "on a typical day in November 2005," only about seven in a thousand households - and less than one in a thousand kids - faced "some disruption" to their normal eating patterns.

A hunger crisis this clearly is not.

And, by the way, New York state has even less of this "problem" than the nation as a whole.

Surely America - New York, in particular - is blessed with affluence. No one should go hungry.

The good news is, almost no one does.

Notwithstanding what Michael Bloomberg, Christine Quinn and her City Council might have New Yorkers believe.