During the past twenty years, the American Bar Association and many state bars have repeatedly proclaimed there to be an acute shortage of lawyers in rural America. A grim picture is painted of “legal deserts”: rural counties beset by a shrinking population of lawyers (in some cases, no lawyers at all) and a widespread reluctance of younger lawyers to forgo the attractions of urban life in order to fill the gap. The argument is that the shortage threatens access to justice and even basic respect for the rule of law in much of the nation.
Counties with Five or Fewer Lawyers, 2020
(generated from a template provided courtesy of mapchart.org)
On such premises, since 2008, nearly half of all states, including Wisconsin, have created rural lawyer recruitment (RLR) programs. These RLR programs variously provide stipends, student loan repayment subsidies, and government legal positions for lawyers willing to commit to rural practice for a set period of time; stipends for students willing to intern with rural lawyers; and support and training for rural practice. Yet to date, most RLR programs have been based on incomplete analysis and ad hoc solutions.
Public Interest Law Society (PILS) fellowships are more than summer jobs—they are immersive experiences that place students directly in the heart of legal practice and community need. PILS Fellows gain hands-on exposure to the challenges and responsibilities of lawyering, developing practical skills while also deepening their understanding of justice, equity, and advocacy. This experiential learning, even outside the curriculum, transforms classroom lessons into lived realities, shaping students into future lawyers who are both capable and committed to serving the public good.
The summer of 2025 was nothing short of extraordinary for Marquette Law School’s Public Interest Law Society Fellows. Nineteen students devoted more than 6,650 hours of service across 12 public interest organizations and agencies. At a time when the need for public interest lawyers has never been greater, our Fellows stepped into the justice gaps—delivering life-changing legal help while also becoming the kind of justice-driven advocates our communities urgently need.
Each month, the City of Milwaukee posts an updated list of unpaid property taxes. As I write this, the latest data is as of September 5, 2025, and it shows $46,403,939 in total delinquent property tax principal owed across 10,302 properties.1
Of these delinquent taxes, 38% are owed by a residential landlord, 34% by an owner-occupier, and 28% by the owner of a non-residential property. Residential landlords own 44% of the properties which are currently tax delinquent; owner-occupiers own 45%, and non-residential properties make up the last 11%.
Delinquent Property Taxes by Property Type
City of Milwaukee, 5 September 2025
parcels
taxes owed
percent of
parcels
taxes owed
not residential
1,129
$13,140,746
11%
28%
owner occupied
4,651
$15,835,820
45%
34%
residential landlord
4,522
$17,427,373
44%
38%
Landlords often divide their properties between many different LLCs, making it hard to tell how much they really owe. Our website mkepropertyownership.com links individual LLCs (and other owner names) based on shared business addresses. To be sure, the individual LLCs are legally distinct, and it’s often impossible to conclusively prove they share the same beneficial ownership. Still, these connections create useful ownership networks, which are in many cases almost certainly a single distinct landlord.
Here are the ownership networks which owe the most in delinquent property taxes among all residential landlords in the city.
Top 15 Landlord Networks by Delinquent Taxes Owed
in the City of Milwaukee as of 9/5/2025
click ‘details’ to learn more about this network
parcels
owed
HISTORIC GARFIELD APARTMENTS LLC etc Group (details)
These top-owing ownership networks cover a range of landlord types. Some of them own just a handful of apartment buildings (with large and unpaid tax bills). Others owe small tax bills for many single family rentals or duplexes.
For example, the Historic Garfield Apartments LLC etc Group owes $548,008 in unpaid taxes for two large apartment buildings, one at 333 W State and the other at 758 N Broadway.
Ownership of the RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES RESOU etc Group is more clear. This is the Highgrove Holdings portfolio, originally operating out of Torrance, California. Highgrove took down their website for investors earlier this year, but it is still visible on the Internet Archive. Properties owned by this web of LLCs collectively owe $301,560 in delinquent taxes.
Like Highgrove, the Fountainhead Contracting LLC etc Group also owns many duplexes and single family rentals. Across 73 delinquent properties, Fountainhead owes the city $239,829 in late taxes. (Perhaps it is unsurprising that a company presumably named in reference to Ayn Rand would be reluctant to pay its taxes.) The LLCs in this network are mainly connected to a residential address in Muskego, a Waukesha County suburb.
Footnotes
This total and all other figures discussed in this article are calculated after I removed records from the city’s file if the current owner is the City of Milwaukee or another tax exempt non-profit or if the property no longer contains a record in the latest version of the city’s property database.↩︎
