It’s Hooverville on the Hudson.

Like a throwback to the Great Depression, a shantytown has risen in Union City, NJ, on the embankment of the river, plywood hovels with million-dollar views of Manhattan.

“We don’t have it bad,” said Pat, who lives in a 10-by-16 shack with a propane stove. “We get by.”

She and her boyfriend, Frank, 52, don’t have a street address. Their outer walls are blanketed with carpet padding for insulation, and their floors are covered with a patchwork of old rugs. A tattered American flag sits atop their pitched roof.

For them, it’s home sweet home, with no rent and the freedom to drink whenever they want, unlike living at a homeless shelter.

For others, the tent city is temporary, a way station to wait out a bad economy.

Carlos Perez, 42, and Victor Alsamendi Changa, 39, sleep in an encampment just north of Frank and Pat, past the viaduct connecting Hoboken and Union City.

Perez, of Guatemala, and Changa, an Argentine, are saving up for an apartment. “We’re working on it,” Changa said in Spanish. “Winter is too cold.”

Mark Albiez, a Union City spokesman, said that because the embankment is public land, the city can’t force people to move.

“There’s really nothing we can do,” he said.

“There are safety concerns. We try to help them . . . Especially in the winter.”

For the time being, Changa and Perez, who have lived there for about two months, prefer their casita. The nearest homeless shelter makes people who stay overnight clear out by 6 a.m., and the Pentecostal church up the hill requires Bible study in exchange for a bed.

“I don’t have to pay rent here,” said Perez, a day laborer who sends most of his money to his wife and five children in Guatemala. “I’m here with my good friends.”

Their house — which consists of plywood boards, sheet metal and blankets underneath a thatch of vines — is just west of the NJ Transit trolley line that wakes them every morning.

Once they’re up, they hike up the hill to wait on a street corner, hoping a boss will pick them for a day’s work.

Before, they had apartments and steady construction work. Changa lost his job when his boss died. Perez left his when his boss stopped doling out a steady paycheck.

They don’t mind living outside, but only if it doesn’t last much longer.

“This is not a real life,” Changa said.

But for some — like Cruz Melendez, the “king of the hill” who says he’s lived here 31 years — this is as close to normal as it gets.

Melendez, 70, built three of the shacks and lives in one of them. Pictures of Jesus and a horse adorn the wall above his front door. He said living in a home like this reminds him of his first house in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Just not in the winter.

That’s when Melendez stocks up on rum and wine and starts heating his shack.

“I have a little fireplace in there,” he said. “It has a chimney.”

Frank and Pat cook and heat their place with propane tanks and plan to stay put this winter, as well.

Pat works the stove most evenings.

She plans to serve turkey, sausage stuffing, brown sauerkraut and yams this week.

“And a lot of beer,” Frank added, raising a can of Keystone.

They hang their clothes from nails on the western wall. On the floor, there’s a grid made from duct tape where Frank plays tic-tac-toe.

“I do side jobs here and there,” Frank said. “I work at least two or three times a week.”

He worked a steady construction job before this, but then he lost it and got divorced.

“Everything went downhill from there,” he said.