Access to precise and regularly updated data enables officials to determine where to target resources and whether housing reforms are having their intended impact.
Source: HUD Office of Policy Development and Research
Photo: Courtesy
Accurate data on the total number of housing units are crucial for policymakers to make informed decisions to address the nation’s housing shortage. Access to precise and regularly updated data enables officials to determine where to target resources and whether housing reforms are having their intended impact. Federal, state, and local officials historically have relied on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey (BPS), which tracks new housing construction permits issued monthly and annually. However, in 2023, the Census Bureau’s Geography Division launched a new program, the Address Count Listing Files. The files are published twice a year and derive from the Census Bureau’s Master Address File (MAF), providing a more comprehensive and accurate picture of housing growth. These new data allow policymakers to evaluate more clearly which housing reforms are effectively increasing the housing supply.
Accessing Housing Data
The MAF provides a geolocated inventory of all known housing units, group quarters, and nonresidential units and resultantly the Address Count Listing Files encompass total housing unit counts and total group quarters counts at the census block level. Currently, housing unit counts are the only data offered at the census block level, the smallest census geography. These data offer actual numbers rather than estimates, projections, or adjusted figures. The Address Count Listing Files include raw data from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas. The most recent data from the Address Count Listing Files are available from July and November 2025.
To more easily visualize the raw data from the Address Count Listing Files, users can access interactive map viewer applications to understand trends in housing supply, land use, and population growth. In 2025, the Census Bureau released step-by-step instructional videos to help users employ the map viewers to examine housing unit change and address counts. The Housing Unit Change Viewer permits the user to compare housing unit count data from the 2020 census to the most recent housing unit count data available. Users can identify changes in the number of housing units by state, county, census tract, census block group, or census block by zooming in or by searching for a specific census geography. The Housing Unit Change Viewer allows users to select from three maps showing housing unit percentage change, numeric change, or a combination of both. Users can also choose either the standard or imagery basemaps to view topographical differences. The Address Count Listing Files Viewer allows users to zoom in on or use the query tool to search by a particular census block to obtain housing unit and group quarters totals. The Address Count Listing Files Viewer also provides data on land and water area.
Strengthening Data-Informed Policymaking
Before the introduction of these new tools, BPS was the most widely used tool to measure housing production. Due to variations in local response rates, BPS has a limited ability to count certain categories of housing, such as accessory dwelling units, office buildings converted to housing, or single-family homes subdivided into multifamily units. Other data sources, including the American Housing Survey and the American Community Survey, rely on MAF as the sampling universe, but these surveys pose challenges because of sampling and associated margins of error in housing unit estimates. The Address Count Listing Files fill these gaps by focusing not only on macro-level housing production but also on housing created within existing buildings. The Address Count Listing Files capture net housing production, accounting for all new construction, conversions, additions, and housing losses due to demolitions and natural disasters. Note, however, that the new data track only when an address is registered with the U.S. Postal Service after a housing project is nearly complete; they do not measure housing completions.
Policy Implications
The new data will help policymakers and researchers more accurately measure progress in housing production. Recent legislative proposals show how the dataset might be useful. In March 2026, the U.S. Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which includes a provision on calculating the number of housing units using the Address Count Listing Files. This legislation incorporates the Build Now Act of 2025, which mandates use of the Address Count Listing Files data to calculate the housing growth improvement rate at the census block level to set Community Development Block Grant allocations. Because the Senate made substantive amendments to the U.S. House of Representatives’ version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, members of Congress are collaborating to decide whether to pass the Senate’s version, make additional amendments, or proceed to conference to reach a resolution.
The semiannual updates to the Address Count Listing Files provide local officials with real-time data that can help assess the health of the housing market with greater precision. States and local jurisdictions no longer need to rely on a patchwork of limited data or invest in their own data systems and infrastructure to track housing changes. Local officials and researchers interested in understanding the impacts of new zoning reforms on a specific neighborhood, for example, can now examine housing changes within census blocks and compare housing production across neighborhoods.
Looking Ahead
The Address Count Listing Files are streamlining the measurement of housing production progress. These data can support policymakers in making greater inroads into increasing housing supply and alleviating the housing shortage. Such timely data can enable jurisdictions to conduct various housing analyses, including assessing whether a particular zoning reform is achieving its intended outcome of increasing housing permits and supply. Harnessing these new data is vital to targeting funding to communities in need.
Published Date: 28 May 2026
The contents of this article are the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or the U.S. Government.
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