I worked for an airline that outstation based flying EAS routes. In short, the commute sucked. your trips were all day trips starting at the outstation flying into the hub and back out to the outstation. At normal airlines, the airline provides the hotel at the outstation. At the outstation basing airline, the hotel is on you - or you try to find a place to live - since there were only 3 crews based at the outstation there isn't a crashpad kind of situation either.
You weren't based in the outstation long enough either to be able to sign an apartment lease - most times you could only hold the outstation for a bid period or two before a bump and flush would reshuffle everyone's outstation base and now you were stuck in a lease that you had to pay to break (if you rented)
One thing we were able to finagle between the pilots was on the pilot's last day, the pilot would fly in to the hub, and then do a jetbridge swap and then catch a commute back to wherever he was going, the commuting pilot needing to fly out to the outstation would operate back out to the outstation.
As far as finding temporary lodging at the outstation, what we ended up doing was crashing the TDY pilot's hotel room. there would be all of the other 5 outstaion-based pilots in the guys room since the airline was paying for his room because he was TDY.
