I won’t allow my friend to be homeless, but how do I set boundaries while she stays with me?

‘Try to remember the fortune-cookie wisdom: would you rather be non-confrontational or treated fairly?’ Painting: The Laundress by Jean Simeon Chardin. Photograph: Alamy

I have an old friend from another city – who is struggling to find work and just got evicted from her home – staying with my family. Part of her struggle to find her own place (or even a homeless shelter in her area) is that many landlords don’t accept pets and she has a cat. She’s basically starting her life over. Her skills are minimal (no degrees or specialised training), no car, and she just left a big city for the small town that we live in. She and I both know that it will be months upon months of living with us. She has spent the last five years caring for her mother, who had dementia.

As much as I’m humbled and honoured to give her a leg up, I’m terrified that she will be living with us for a long time. My focus on myself and my own goals are fragmented at this point, because I’m trying to help her out, too. She’s also afraid of doing anything alone. I’m trying to think of realistic boundaries/timelines to set with her; but in all reality she may not have her ducks in a row. I will not allow her to be homeless; but my sanity may be on the line if she’s going to be my permanent roommate. Any advice?

Eleanor says: You’re doing a good thing. It sounds like your friend fell hard and bit the asphalt – mourning a parent, losing years of possible career time to caretaking, and now without a home. In a culture of “you don’t owe anyone anything”, you’re doing a good thing.

But the fact something is good to do doesn’t necessarily make it easy – total compliance with morality would probably make life worse and leave you without any bits of sweetness or solitude. And boundaries are going to be important – you don’t want to wind up like the giving tree, sawing off your own limbs so someone else has a place to sit.

How to balance the imperative for kindness with the need to protect your own sanity?

I think one place to start is recruiting as much help as you can to improve her situation.

Precarious housing is a broader category than people think. It includes couchsurfers and people who’ve been evicted and people staying with friends or family in just the way that your friend is. If your own ingenuity or industry could fix the problems that put people in these situations, there wouldn’t be anyone in them any more. There are professionals and groups who have more experience than either of you in getting people back to more permanent housing. If you can encourage her to grab hold of as much qualified help as possible, that will simultaneously make it more likely that she finds a solution, and less likely that finding that solution will devour all your time and focus.

It can be really easy for people to put off engaging this kind of help – out of shame, social awkwardness or the sense that it’s only for people in worse positions. If you can frame it as a kindness to you for her to seek this kind of help, it might overcome those feelings.

It might also help to be specific about what’s putting your sanity on the line. If you can name exactly what you need and aren’t getting, it’s easier to find ways to provide it, even in slightly compromised ways.

If it’s about solitude – if you’re like me and without enough alone time your brain goes like an old TV tuned to nothing, just static and bands of nonsense colours – you could try to find slivers of alone time even while she’s living with you. You could ask for X many nights to yourself, and make them predictable and recurring, so you can plan and look forward to them.

Or if it’s about feeling overwhelmed with responsibility for another person’s future, you could work on small ways to call your focus back. Mark periods of the day off as times when you do not think about this, or practice directing her (and you) to professionals instead.

One final thing would be to make sure you keep careful track of the common ground between you. You don’t want to be thinking “I wonder how long until she finds a place to stay” while she’s thinking “thank heavens I’ve found a place to stay”. Try to make sure that you’re each continuously upfront about what the other expects.

If it comes to it, and you feel like you’ve ended up with too-porous boundaries, try to remember the fortune-cookie wisdom: would you rather be non-confrontational or treated fairly?

This is a really good thing you’re doing. Not many people put their money (or their house) where their mouth is in this way. Just try to make sure it doesn’t obscure her longer-term path.

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