We have the contact:street=*, contact:city=*, contact:house number=*, etc. tags where there is a mismatch between physical—what I think of as real—address, and an address at which someone may be “contacted” at.
Frankly I’ve always thought that the interpretation that addr:* tags were supposed to be “postal” addresses was nonsense in the context of Canada; it seems just as nonsensical in the US context. The only reason I can suss out that people ever “agreed” to this consensus was because in many countries—especially in Europe—mappers consider their national postal services more authoritative than any other political body for establishing addresses. It’s definitely not the case in North America. It’ll usually not deviate much between a “physical” and “postal” address, presuming a place even has a postal address. There are a great many buildings, domiciles, and points of interest that DON’T have postal addresses beyond a post office box or a rural route.
I wholeheartedly support a preference for so-called “9-1-1 addresses” rather than “postal addresses”. The former tells you where something is physically situated; the latter only tells you how to mail something to someone. Since OSM is after all a map we should give primacy to where stuff is.
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