16.3 Legislative findings — housing.

The general assembly finds and declares as follows:

1. There exists a serious shortage of safe and sanitary residential housing available to low or moderate income families.

2. This shortage is conducive to disease, crime, environmental decline and poverty and impairs the economic value of large areas, which are characterized by depreciated values, impaired investments, and reduced capacity to pay taxes and are a menace to the health, safety, morals and welfare of the citizens of the state.

3. These conditions result in a loss in population and further deterioration, accompanied by added costs to communities for creation of new public facilities and services elsewhere.

4. One major cause of this condition has been recurrent shortages of funds in private channels.

5. These shortages have contributed to reductions in construction of new residential units, and have made the sale and purchase of existing residential units a virtual impossibility in many parts of the state.

6. The ordinary operations of private enterprise have not in the past corrected these conditions.

7. A stable supply of adequate funds for residential financing is required to encourage new housing and the rehabilitation of existing housing in an orderly and sustained manner and to reduce the problems described in this section.

8. It is necessary to create a state finance authority to encourage the investment of private capital and stimulate the construction and rehabilitation of adequate housing through the use of public financing.

9. The interest costs paid by group homes of fifteen beds or less licensed as health care facilities or child foster care facilities for facility acquisition and indirectly reimbursed by the department of human services through payments for patients at those facilities who are recipients of medical assistance or state supplementary assistance are severe drains on the state’s budget. A reduction in these costs obtained through financing with tax-exempt revenue bonds would clearly be in the public interest.

10. There is a need in areas of the state for new construction of certain group homes of fifteen beds or less licensed as health care facilities or child foster care facilities to provide adequate housing and care for elderly Iowans and Iowans with disabilities, and to provide adequate housing and foster care for children.

11. There is a need to provide for early intensive intervention on behalf of juveniles which is designed to meet the juveniles’ needs and prevent future antisocial and criminal behavior and there is a need in areas of the state to establish facilities providing residential housing or treatment facilities for juveniles requiring a more enhanced level of services than those services currently available in the state’s existing foster care system.

[C77, 79, 81, §220.3; 82 Acts, ch 1187, §4]

83 Acts, ch 96, §157, 159; 85 Acts, ch 252, §27; 90 Acts, ch 1239, §5

C93, §16.3

96 Acts, ch 1129, §10; 2007 Acts, ch 54, §13; 2008 Acts, ch 1031, §16; 2014 Acts, ch 1080, §12, 78