For decades, residents and seasonal visitors to the Hamptons and other towns on the East End of Long Island have braced for spending summer mornings and evenings in the “trade parade,” the congested procession of contractors, hospital staff and other workers who commute to the East End to work every day. Priced out of the area, many workers have long lived up-island in less expensive locales like Manorville and Mastic-Shirley, forced to commute for hours each day. Fewer and fewer workers are willing to endure wall-to-wall traffic for low-wage jobs, punctuating the longtime dilemma that the workers who keep the North and South Forks running cannot afford to live there. “I don’t throw the word crisis around very easily, but it’s at that point,” said Fred Thiele Jr., a state assemblyman whose district includes Southampton. The staffer moved in with her boyfriend, he said, “but for a lot of people in that situation, they didn’t have options."

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