The High Cost of Earning a Living in the Hamptons

The high cost of living and working on the East End of Long Island made the front page in papers all across the United States over the weekend. Thanks to an in-depth report by The Associated Press that was picked up by newspapers across the country, including USA Today, the income disparity between those who find themselves in need of a job to pay the bills and those lucky enough to own second homes (or third or fourth) in the Hamptons was front and center in the national news.

The article reveals the struggles that working people face in occupations as diverse as being a landscaper or a doctor at Southampton Hospital in a community where the average price of a house is more than $,1,800,000.

In the AP story David Hahn, a groundskeeper who has worked at a Southampton estate for 20 years, describes his commute to work from a community 30 miles to the west and says that his combined driving time often takes three hours.

To offset the high cost of living, Southampton Hospital now offers housing to nurses and residents as part of their compensation package to entice top-notch staff to remain in the area despite a sticker price most find prohibitive.

From a food pantry in the midst of Southampton’s privet hedged estates to a thrift shop that offers up designer labels, the article captures the paradoxes of living in a region where income disparities are much more than a set of dry statistics because they define how day-to-day life is lived when gas prices can run as high as a dollar more than in communities slightly farther to the west and milk costs $5.99 a gallon.