The Southern California housing reports and photographs collection consists of reports, photographs, studies, housing authority materials, and a speech, 1937-1972, related to the problem of affordable housing in Los Angeles. Their authors include the Los Angeles City Housing Authority, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, and the Claremont Colleges. Of particular interest are the WPA reports undertaken by such Los Angeles City agencies as the Housing Authority regarding the state of housing for the poor in Los Angeles at the end of the Depression Era.

Also of value are the photographs, for they provide visual evidence of slum housing in Los Angeles in the 1940s, although their photographers are not identified. Those in folder 8 all bear the date "1941," as well as captions describing their subject, on the scrapbook page on which they are mounted. The photographs in folder 7 most probably date from this time as well and are labeled on their back.