State Mandated Addressing Change Inside City Limits

Update:  November 5, 2021

Address Update:

After several calls regarding the inability to change an address on bills etc., we reached out to the postal service to determine what the Citizens needed to do. This process will take up to 3 more weeks to complete so that the new addressees are recognized in the system since Postal employees must enter these manually and this takes time. With that being said, it will take at least 3 more weeks to change within their system so some of your accounts may have to wait to be changed.  The upside is that I was assured that all mail will be delivered as the carriers have the old and new addresses and service will not be impacted. We thank the employees at the post office for working diligently to enter a large amount of data on short notice. The other issue we are seeing is some folks did not receive a letter giving them their new address. If you need a letter, please contact the Haywood County Addressing office for this letter to be regenerated. If you just need the new address number, please contact Town staff at 648-2363 for that information. All Town water accounts, and tax accounts will automatically have the new address, so you do not need to call and change the address with the Town.

Dear Residents:

As you may have heard or seen in local news, the Town of Canton is updating all addresses to be compliant with the Haywood County E911 Addressing ordinance. The ordinance states that all addresses in Haywood County are assigned with the odd numbered houses being on the left and the even numbered on the right side of the road. Numbers are also assigned based on the distance of your driveway along the road.  This is to help Fire, EMS and Law Enforcement personnel locate your house quickly in an emergency. Therefore, we need to change the number of your address to reflect a more accurate location per Haywood County E911 standards.

Please begin making changes to your address as soon as possible. The county ordinance requires the posting of the address number within 30 days from the date of this letter of notification.  If the residence or structure is less than 75 feet from the road, you may post the number on the front, side or back that is most clearly visible from the road.  If the residence or structure is more than 75 feet from the road, or not visible, you are required to post the address number at the entrance to the driveway.

We have notified the post office of this change, and they have agreed to continue to deliver to the old address for up to six (6) months upon request. We apologize for any inconveniences, please feel free to call with any questions or concerns.

******We apologize for this frustrating process of the Addressing and certainly understand the frustration that goes along with it. Below are a few answers to some of the questions we have been getting:
• There have been some questions on the numbering system. I found this info on Haywood County addressing’s website:
o The numerical street addresses will be assigned according to the distance a structure is located along a certain road. By using 1,000 numbers to a mile, a structure 1/10 of a mile down the road on the right will have an address of 100, 1/2 mile on the right will be 500. Even numbers will be on the right side of the road and odd numbers will be on the left as numbers increase.
• There have also been some questions on the renaming of streets:
o The E911 policy states that if there are two similarly named streets that could cause confusion in an emergency situation the street with the lower house count will be the one required to be renamed.   *******

Nick Scheuer

Town Manager