The Portland example is dangerous territory, because now they have a home they can rent for much more per month and might kick you out. Then you just lived in a construction zone doing free labor for a year for nothing.
Even worse than that, sometimes people get fired for political donations. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was "pressured to resign" (fired) for supporting Prop 8. You don't even have to say unpopular beliefs, you just have to hold them privately until someone uncovers them through digging through your records.
I would stop focusing on finding a co-founder and focus instead on starting a business. A CTO isn't the solution to wanting something developed and not having money to pay someone. Find something you can do by yourself. If you're capable you will find and hire a CTO later.
The issue I have is that I don't especially want this gig and don't need it. It's just nice to have for extra cash on the side and the work is easy so it's hard to justify turning it down. Is it really unreasonable to not want to be on call? Because if that's the case, I wouldn't really want to do it at all. I feel like 24 hour turn around on tasks seems reasonable but still being generally reachable and answering emails during business hours.