New US Census Bureau Address Count Listing Files Released

I’ve worked with and have had great respect for Geographer Jim Castagneri, who is with the US Census Bureau, for many years now. When I asked him to write for the Spatial Reserves data blog, about some of his favorite new data sets and services, I was thrilled that he agreed. Here, Jim shares an important geographic product release that I believe will be of interest to data analysts and GIS users. I’ve tested this resource myself and agree that it is extremely useful. —Joseph Kerski

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The lack of detailed population counts available in the intercensal period has troubled data users since the introduction of the modern census.  Aside from local efforts to track and record housing and population change, the federal government now has a new dataset to assist in this effort. 

Called the Address Count Listing Files, these data represent the latest available count of housing units by census block updated bi-annually.  These files are created for all 50 States, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and U.S. Island Areas.  The latest data release was in January of 2023.  More information on these files and how to download them can be found here: 

https://www.census.gov/geographies/reference-files/2023/geo/addcountlisting.html

These files are relevant for several reasons.  First, they represent the first-time the Census Bureau has released updated, block-level housing counts between decennial censuses.  Second, the housing counts are actual counts, not estimates, and they are not affected by the Bureau’s new Differential Privacy non-disclosure effort. 

Paired with the annually revised TIGER Partnership Shapefiles, local planners and regional emergency responders can now derive relatively accurate, detailed population figures without a need to conduct aerial interpolation or the more rigorous dasymetric modeling with tangentially related datasets.  By considering local housing occupancy rates and persons-per-household figures, one can derive a fairly accurate population count at the block level independent from the decennial census count. 

The above site also contains a very helpful viewer app based on ArcGIS technology (shown below).

What would you like to see on this blog?

We have been writing the Spatial Reserves blog about all things data–where to find it, how to assess its quality, and its societal implications, for over a decade now. We started it because of frequent questions that the GIS community had and still have on “How do I find geospatial data?”, “How do I know if that data is any good?”, and “What are the social and ethical implications of the use of geospatial data, including copyright, symbology, fee vs. free data, and location privacy?” We have enjoyed interacting with you, the readers, through your comments, emails, LinkedIn posts, and in other ways.

During these past 10 years, we have never conducted a survey of the community of readers. As we are considering writing a 2nd edition to the book The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data, we thought now would be an ideal time to conduct such a survey.

Please participate in a short 9 question survey that should only take 3 minutes of your time but which will be immensely helpful to us and the future readers of this data blog:

https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/f8be50659d504f359df891f1436db96c

We look forward to hearing what you think!

–Joseph Kerski, Jill Clark