bwragg-
I ended up reverting back to the standard streets locator setup. supportsEmptyHouseNumber broke the results for specific locations on a street range. So "5 st name" would return the same results as "st name."
What we told users who wanted to find the beginning of a street with just "st name" is to enter in the single street name twice, as if it's intersecting itself (which every segment actually is doing). For example "Encinitas Blvd & Encinitas Blvd" takes you to the beginning of the lowest range for Encinitas Blvd. This is my desired result for "Encinitas Blvd" when using supportsEmptyHouseNumber. Our users (not GIS-savvy) have seemed to grasp this "intersecting itself" concept and we no longer have the need for supportsEmptyHouseNumber.
I hope this helps.
Kevin