Week in Review: Contractor Takes on Town Council

August 19, 2018

In the old copper-mining town of Jerome, Arizona, fifth-generation carpenter and general contractor Glenn Odegard found his dream project. High above the town on the side of a hill stood an abandoned, dilapidated, historic home that had seen much better days. Built in 1898, a mudslide had all-but destroyed the house in 1953—but Glenn knew he had the skills to restore its Victorian architectural grandeur.

What he didn’t know was that after his hard work, the town council would threaten to take it all away.

It was one heck of a project, as Glenn recalls in a new video and article on the Goldwater Institute’s In Defense of Liberty blog.

When I found it, the house had been vacant and abandoned for more than 60 years. It had no roof or foundation left, not to mention up to a dozen feet of mud and rocks inside the entire house.

Amid all the old plaster, wood, and debris littering the house, there were plants and trees growing inside—the tallest of which was a 12-foot tree in the master bedroom that went from the mud floor, through the ceiling, through the attic, and beyond the roof an additional four feet. What once was a beautiful residence had decayed into a greenhouse for six decades.

After countless hours of work, Glenn’s house looks much different today. Walk up the stairs of his front porch, gaze eastward across the desert valley, step across the threshold, and be transported back in time to experience a piece of the Old West. It’s an opportunity the Glenn is proud to offer to his overnight guests. Home-sharing made it possible.

“If I didn’t have the ability to recoup my financial investment by home-sharing, I would never have had the financial resources to restore my 120-year-old home,” Glenn said. “Home-sharing is a right that others in Jerome—and throughout Arizona—almost lost for good.”

Click here to find out how Glenn’s dream nearly came to an end and how the Goldwater Institute helped rescue it.

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