Breaking Ground is located in Chicago’s west side neighborhood of North Lawndale.

Over the years Breaking Ground has taken many shapes, at times serving as a manufacturing center for the North Lawndale neighborhood and at others as a training facility for the trades.

However since 1999 Jeff Dennis has made Breaking Ground’s primary focus to build houses for North Lawndale and other communities around Chicago, providing owner occupied housing, a need which Jeff saw as having potentially the greatest transformational effect on a community when met.

Since beginning Breaking Ground has built over 70 new homes around Chicago and rehabilitated more than 150.

Jeff and Breaking Ground continue to believe in the effects that providing affordable and quality homes can have on a communities and continue to pursue that mission to this day.