You can only do so much to help someone who can’t help themselves. We all like to believe we’d be incredibly giving to others in a crisis, housing our friends and relatives with nowhere else to go and supporting them through difficult times. In reality, most of us cannot afford to do that. You’re way more likely to get taken advantage of than you think, and if you let someone step all over you, they will do it until they can’t do it anymore. 

It’s one thing to ask a huge favor (like free housing) from an incredibly close family member. It’s another thing to ask for that from a cousin and his wife who you’re not close with and barely know. That’s precisely what happened to this couple, who are being asked to house a family of 5 during the wife’s first pregnancy. They won’t seem to take no for an answer.