(310 ILCS 10/2) (from Ch. 67 1/2, par. 2)
Sec. 2.
It is hereby declared as a matter of legislative
determination that in order to promote and protect the health, safety,
morals and welfare of the public, it is necessary in the public interest
to provide for the creation of municipal corporations to be known as
housing authorities, and to confer upon and vest in these housing
authorities all powers necessary or appropriate in order that they may
engage in low-rent housing and slum clearance projects, and provide
rental assistance, and undertake land assembly, clearance,
rehabilitation, development, and redevelopment projects as will tend to
relieve the shortage of decent, safe, affordable, and sanitary
dwellings; and that the powers herein conferred upon the housing
authorities including the power to acquire and dispose of
improved or unimproved property, to remove unsanitary or substandard
conditions, to construct and operate housing accommodations, to regulate
the maintenance of housing projects and to borrow, expend, loan, invest,
and repay monies for the purposes herein set forth, are public objects
and governmental functions essential to the public interest.
It is further declared as a matter of legislative determination that
the crucial affordable housing shortage which continues to prevail
throughout the State has contributed and will continue to contribute
materially toward an increase in crime, juvenile delinquency, infant
mortality, drug abuse, drug disability and disease; that by reason thereof
it has become a social and economic imperative to broaden the powers of
housing authorities with respect to the acquisition of property, the
construction of housing accommodations, the provision of rental assistance
and the assembly, clearance and sale or other disposition of property
acquired for development or redevelopment by persons, firms and
corporations; that the provisions of this Act are grounded in public
necessity and predicated upon serious emergency conditions requiring
immediate consideration and action, and that this amendatory Act embraces
public objects and governmental functions essential to the public interest.
It is further declared that in municipalities of less than 500,000
population further stimulus must be provided for the conservation of
urban areas and the prevention of slums if the public interest
objectives of the Urban Community Conservation Act, are to be secured; that
in these municipalities housing authorities should be authorized to
initiate, plan, study and execute urban conservation projects as an
alternative mechanism to that provided in the Urban Community Conservation
Act; that unless this authority is so delegated there is a serious and
substantial risk that many urban areas will deteriorate into actual slum
and blight areas; and that to prevent the occurrence of these conditions
and the social evils attendant thereon, and to protect and conserve the
public interest, the provisions of this amendatory Act are necessary.
(Source: P.A. 87-200.)
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