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Census explains address‑product limitations and the Census Geocoder service
Summary
Census presenters said Title 13 restricts release of address coordinates; the Bureau provides address‑count listing files twice a year and a popular Census Geocoder API that returns interpolated coordinates from address‑range matches.
Kevin Holly explained the Bureau's address products and the Census Geocoder service and answered questions about data availability.
Holly said Title 13 prevents the Census Bureau from sharing master address locations publicly, so the agency provides limited address products instead. "After the 2020 census, we started releasing address count listing files. These files include the total housing unit counts and total group 0.25 counts by census block. We release these files twice per year, once after each of our 2 annual benchmarks in July and November," he said.
On the geocoding service, Holly described both interactive and API access and said the geocoder works against address‑ranges (not the full master address file) to return interpolated coordinates and associated geographies. "If it finds a match with 1 of those ranges, it provides you an interpolated coordinate, that it then can check against our geography to tell you what geographic areas a particular coordinate is within," he said. Holly also noted the service accepts batch submissions in addition to single queries.
