What would you do?

I read a post this morning which I found it both horrifying and heartbreaking. The post went as follows (edited slightly for clarity):

“AITA (“Am I a Total A******) for not helping my parents when they are homeless?

My parents are terrible with money. When I (27-yr-old female) was little, my father gambled away all the savings, about $100,000, in risky penny stocks which got wiped out in 2008, and we were forced to move into a single-bedroom in a house for the three of us.

Then my mom fell for an MLM [multi-level marketing] and you can imagine what happened; they lost the down payment to the house they were saving for. I begged them not to sign up for it, since I saw it was clearly a scam, and showed them evidence that it was, and they just laughed at me and ignored me. They lost about $28,000 from that.

Then recently they fell for a college signup scam and lost $32,000. They weren’t signing up for college; they just needed a loan and tried to go through a “private broker” who promised to get them a school loan that they would use on whatever they wanted. I went with them to see the broker and told them it was a scam, and they ignored me.

So basically they were trying to scam the government, and got scammed instead. I actually tried to pry the pen away from my father’s hands when I got desperate, as he was writing his bank info and SSN [Social Security number], and he screamed at me that I was embarrassing him, and [signed] anyway.

Again they lost money, and now they are homeless because their credit is cr*p and they can barely afford even cr*ppy apartments. They probably can’t get that money back since they have little documentation on the broker and what he promised. Now they live in their car and are begging me for money.

I have about $100,000 saved waiting to buy a house, and they know about it because I stupidly told them I was saving for a house, and now they are calling me and showing up at my apartment asking for money. They also want to move in in the meantime, but my roommate and I agreed visitation from friends or family is [maximum] a week, to prevent resentment; and if my parents move in, they probably will refuse to move out.

They are going to food pantries, and honestly I can’t find it in myself to be that sympathetic, since they don’t listen to me until they need my money. AITA?”

In a later post, someone asked, “How did you save $100,000 by age 27?”, and the young woman replied: “Saving every penny, no eating out, [wearing] clothes from high school, having roommates, no car, only taking public transportation or riding my bike. I’m traumatized from growing up with no money, so I penny-pinch like crazy.”

Responses to this post were universally in favor of letting her parents stew in their own juices. Some people strongly suggested she lock down her credit in case her parents take out loans or credit cards in her name (since presumably they know her SSN). Everyone agreed she should not let them move into her apartment.

I read this post out loud to Don, and we discussed the ramifications of such a situation. It’s easy to give harsh financial advice, but not so easy when it’s dealing with the strong emotional bonds of one’s own parents and watching them living on the streets. Clearly the Fifth Commandment tells us to honor our father and mother; but does that include bailing them out of self-made scam-laden mistakes? In short, there is no easy answer to this dilemma.

What would you do?