8. One should do everything possible in a guest's best interests, so if someone is looking for a place to spend the night and you know that people living nearby would gladly welcome the guest and provide everything he needs (while you yourself are unable to do so for some reason), you should not deprive the traveler of that opportunity.
9. If a traveler is in a hurry and cannot stay long, or does not want to burden his host, you must not hold him up.
10. If you have a large house, it is proper to set aside a room for guests. As for communal leaders, in every town, whenever possible, some funds should be allocated to building a hachnasat orchim guesthouse (a home for people in need and travelers, where a meal and a warm place to spend the night await them).
11. Even people who are poor or ill should, whenever possible, take part in this mitzvah.
First, however, they must take care of all their own and their family's needs, and only then begin welcoming guests.
This is expressed in the principle “Chayecha kodmin” (Take care of your own basic needs first).
Once, during the festival of Sukkot, a Jew who had neither food nor a sukkah came to the chief rabbi of Vilnius, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. Rav Chaim Ozer asked that he be served some food, then excused himself, saying: “You may go down to the sukkah and eat, while I will stay in the house because I am not feeling well, and as you know, someone who is ill is not obligated to eat in the sukkah.” When the guest was already seated at the lavishly set table in the sukkah, he saw Rabbi Chaim making his way downstairs with difficulty. The guest was astonished, but Rabbi Chaim approached and explained his behavior as follows: “It suddenly occurred to me that although someone who is ill is exempt from the mitzvah of sitting in a sukkah, he is nevertheless not exempt from the mitzvah of welcoming guests. After all, our forefather Abraham did so even when he was in pain (after his circumcision). So it would be disrespectful and unacceptable for my guest to sit alone in the sukkah while I stayed in the house”.