2030 Census National LUCA Working Group
Improving the 2020 Census Address List Using Local Data
The Case of Hidalgo County, Texas
Texas has 254 counties, more than any other state, 191 of which are classified as rural according to the US Office of Management and Budget.
In 2018, only 55 counties participated in the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) program. Given the inextricable link between the completeness of the address list and the quality of the census enumeration, this shortfall likely contributed to an undercount in the state of Texas.
In an effort to address the lack of participation in the LUCA program, the Texas Census Institute (TxCI) worked to elevate the issue at the state level, to encourage collaboration among agencies and municipalities. Of the state's 29 million people, 7.6 million, or one in four, live outside of incorporated cities and rely on counties for basic services such as law enforcement and emergency medical response. Accurate census data are critical for planning and service delivery to these communities, and the congressional representation and allocation of federal resources upon which these are based.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of LUCA, TxCI analyzed the approach used by Hidalgo County, which sits very close to the border with Mexico. The part of Hidalgo examined for this case study is a community known as Pueblo de Palmas. This community is virtually all Hispanic, with more than four in ten residents under the age of 18, and a total housing unit count of just 219, according to the 2020 Census.
To ensure an accurate local address list for comparison with the Census Bureau's list, Hidalgo County officials first focused on updating their internal address databases used for 911 and other services, by collaborating with community-based organizations to identify areas along the border region likely to have missing or inaccurate addresses. Local organizations and community members familiar with these areas were enlisted to physically locate households and record precise geophysical addresses. County officials then used this updated internal database to revise the Census Bureau's master address file as part of the LUCA program.
There were 219 housing units in the Pueblo de Palmas that were counted in the 2020 Census. Working closely with the Census Bureau staff, we determined that 160 of those units, or 73% of the total count for this community in 2020 was the result of the Hidalgo Luca submission. Moreover, the Census Bureau actually knew of the existence of these housing units, but was unable to include them on the initial census address list because of incomplete geographical information on their exact location. It was only when geographic locations for these units were provided as part of the county's LUCA submission that they were included and enumerated in the 2020 census.
Without the LUCA operation, there is very real chance that upwards of three quarters of the housing units in Puebla de Palmas would have been missed in the 2020 Census. The information on the location of housing possessed by the Hidalgo County staff, combined with the on-the-ground knowledge and access of local community organizations proved to make all the difference.
Moreover, the impact of LUCA on Pueblo de Palmas is just one portion of a much larger submission by Hidalgo County in 2020 LUCA. If the effectiveness of LUCA in Pueblo de Palmas was borne out in all of Hidalgo, their submission of some 10,000 addresses for the entire county could easily have yielded more than 20,000 additional residents, resulting in hundreds of millions of additional dollars this decade.
Therefore, it would be prudent for funders of all types to provide resources to extend this approach to more counties, which means providing funding to community-based organizations as well as to those at the county level who will be responsible for making the LUCA submission to the Census Bureau.
The above report was provided to Rio Grande Valley stakeholders by the Texas Census Institute at a meeting hosted by Angela Broyles and the Prosperity Task Force at Pappadeaux on Oct. 29, 2025.
