Starting out, Rick Goodemann was a Minnesota construction worker hired to refurbish a dilapidated building that had served as low-income housing for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He remembers feeling a sense of waste in hammering away at a project that should have been properly built in the first place but, because of poor design, had disintegrated into disrepair. Further frustrating him, the houses hadnft appreciated for the buyer nor become an asset to the community. Instead, he said, he was merely putting a Band-Aid on a bigger problem.