nmtc-mapper 🗺️

Automated NMTC eligibility checker for addresses and census tracts.

Pass a DataFrame of addresses and get back a tri-state nmtc_eligible column (True / False / None), distress level, poverty rate, AMI ratio, and more — using official CDFI Fund and Census Bureau data. No manual lookups required.

nmtc_eligible is Optional[bool]: True (verified eligible), False (verified ineligible — the CDFI Fund file explicitly says NO), or None (indeterminate — the address could not be geocoded, or the tract is absent from the ~85k-tract universe). None is not a falsy "ineligible": treating it as False fabricates a verified-ineligible answer. The additive eligibility_status column names the four outcomes explicitly — verified-eligible / verified-ineligible / not-found / geocode-failed.

Why nmtc-mapper?

The CDFI Fund provides a manual web tool (CIMS) for checking NMTC eligibility one address at a time. nmtc-mapper automates this — pass 10,000 addresses and get results in seconds, using the same official data source.

Installation

pip install nmtc-mapper

Quickstart

from nmtcmapper import NMTCMapper

mapper = NMTCMapper()

# Single address (geocodes automatically)
result = mapper.check_address("1234 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605")
result.summary()
print(result.nmtc_eligible)      # True / False / None (None = indeterminate)
print(result.eligibility_status) # "verified-eligible" | "verified-ineligible"
                                 #  | "not-found" | "geocode-failed"
print(result.distress_level)     # "deep" / "severe" / "lic" / "ineligible" / "unknown"
print(result.poverty_rate)       # 0.38  (None if the tract is indeterminate)

# Known census tract (no geocoding needed)
result = mapper.check_tract("17031840100")
print(result.nmtc_eligible)    # True

# Batch — enrich a DataFrame of addresses
import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("projects.csv")   # must have 'address' column
df = mapper.enrich(df, address_col="address")
print(df["nmtc_eligible"].value_counts())
print(df["distress_level"].value_counts())

# If you already have census tract IDs
df = mapper.enrich(df, tract_col="tract_id")

# Summary stats
mapper.eligible_count(df)

Failure behavior & offline / demo mode

NMTCMapper() downloads the official CDFI Fund eligibility and Opportunity Zone files (cached under ~/.nmtcmapper/cache). As of 0.3.4 it fails loud: if a download or parse fails, it raises a typed error instead of silently substituting demo data. (Before 0.3.4 any failure silently fell back to a 12-tract synthetic sample, which could report a real, eligible tract as "ineligible" — see the CHANGELOG.)

from nmtcmapper import NMTCMapper, NMTCMapperError

try:
    mapper = NMTCMapper()
except NMTCMapperError as e:
    # Blocked network, moved URL, corrupt file, etc. — never a fabricated answer.
    print(f"Could not load real NMTC data: {e}")
    raise

The exception hierarchy (NMTCMapperError → EligibilityDataError / OZDataError → specific *DownloadError / *ParseError leaves) is exported from the top level, so you can catch broadly or precisely.

Explicit demo / offline data — for examples, tests, or an air-gapped demo, opt in to the synthetic sample dataset. This performs no network calls and stamps the mapper so you can tell demo answers from real ones:

from nmtcmapper import NMTCMapper, load_sample_table

mapper = NMTCMapper.from_sample()   # 12 sample tracts + 6 OZ tracts, offline
print(mapper.data_source)           # "sample"   (real data → "cdfi_fund")

df = load_sample_table()            # the raw 12-tract sample frame

⚠️ Sample data is 12 synthetic-vintage tracts for demos and tests. It is never valid for a real NMTC eligibility answer.

Eligibility Rules (2016-2020 ACS — mandatory since Sept 1, 2024)

A census tract qualifies as a Low-Income Community (LIC) if it meets ANY of:

• Poverty rate >= 20%
• Median Family Income <= 80% of metro/state AMI
• Median Family Income <= 85% of state AMI (high migration rural counties)

Distress levels:

• deep — the tract carries the CDFI Fund's deep-distress designation
• severe — the tract carries the CDFI Fund's severe-distress designation
• lic — NMTC eligible (meets LIC criteria) but not flagged severe/deep
• ineligible — Does not qualify
• unknown — indeterminate: geocode no-match, or the tract is absent from the eligibility universe (paired with nmtc_eligible = None; never "ineligible")

How distress is determined. For the official CDFI Fund file (the live .xlsb download), severe_distress and deep_distress are read directly from the Fund's own pre-computed columns — the package does not recompute them from ACS variables. The CDFI Fund's published criteria for those designations are, for reference, poverty >= 30% / MFI <= 60% AMI / unemployment >= 1.5x national (severe) and poverty >= 40% / MFI <= 50% AMI / unemployment >= 2x national (deep). A threshold-based fallback (_compute_eligibility) exists only for the generic CSV path and the built-in synthetic sample; it is not used for the official file.

Data Sources

• CDFI Fund 2016-2020 ACS Low-Income Community Eligibility File https://www.cdfifund.gov/research-data
• US Census Bureau Geocoding API (free, no API key required) https://geocoding.geo.census.gov

Output Columns

After running .enrich(), your DataFrame will have:

• nmtc_eligible (Optional[bool]: True / False / None — None = indeterminate)
• eligibility_status (str: verified-eligible / verified-ineligible / not-found / geocode-failed)
• distress_level (str: deep / severe / lic / ineligible / unknown)
• poverty_rate (Optional[float])
• ami_ratio (Optional[float])
• unemployment_rate (Optional[float])
• is_non_metro (bool)
• severe_distress (bool)
• deep_distress (bool)

Known Issues

is_opportunity_zone is unreliable — a False may be a vintage miss. The Opportunity Zone list is the CDFI Fund's Dec 2018 designated-QOZ file, and OZs were designated on 2010 census tracts (legally fixed to them). The geocoder returns 2020 tracts, and 1,408 of the 8,764 OZ designations (~16%) have no matching 2020 GEOID (they split/merged/renumbered after 2010). So an address in one of those designations reports Opportunity Zone: No even though it is in a designated OZ. A Yes is trustworthy; a No is not — it may mean "not an OZ" or "OZ with no 2020 GEOID", and the package cannot yet tell them apart. This is pre-existing (not introduced or worsened by 0.4.1's geocoder change). A tri-state fix (Optional[bool]) is slated for 0.5.0 — see the CHANGELOG.

is_nmtc_native_area is always False — it means "not determined," not "not a native area." No column in the live CDFI Fund .xlsb file feeds this field, so it is False for all 85,395 tracts. Native areas (Federal Indian Reservations, Off-Reservation Trust Lands, Hawaiian Home Lands, Alaska Native Village Statistical Areas) are a real NMTC Areas of Higher Distress criterion, but the CDFI Fund publishes it separately from the LIC eligibility file this package loads. Pre-existing since 0.1.0; 0.4.1 does not change it. Resolution deferred to 0.5.0 — see the CHANGELOG.

Running Tests

PYTHONPATH=. pytest tests/ -v

99 tests across all modules (including fail-loud, explicit-sample-mode, tri-state eligibility, and async-batch coverage).

Who This Is For

• CDEs screening project locations for NMTC eligibility
• CDFI analysts qualifying borrower locations at scale
• Researchers analyzing geographic distribution of LIC tracts
• Anyone replacing manual CIMS lookups with automated Python

License

MIT 2026 Jay Patel