When Caltrans built the Century Freeway, it did more than create the last major freeway in Los Angeles.

It also created, albeit indirectly, a new housing bureaucracy.

Century Housing Corp. was established 18 years ago as part of a consent decree to settle a lawsuit, Keith vs. Volpe, brought by residents displaced by the freeway. But with the freeway built and most of the plaintiffs now gone, Century Housing Corp. is at a crossroads.

Century founders want to keep the organization alive to build affordable housing in Southern California. To do that, they want a federal judge to dismiss the original lawsuit.

“There are no more consent decree requirements to be met,” said Robert Norris Jr., executive vice president of Century Housing. “We think the lawsuit should be dismissed.”

But the plaintiffs want the corporation to spend its remaining dollars under the terms of the consent decree and then go out of business.

“They were provided with a particular purpose in mind, and now they’re trying to alter that purpose,” said Carlyle W. Hall Jr. a West L.A. attorney who has represented the client’s plaintiffs for more than two decades.

Hall estimates it would take Century Housing three to four years to spend its $110 million to $120 million nestegg largely comprised of state and federal low-income housing funds on housing projects that meet the court requirements.

A March federal court order, however, gave Century Housing Corp. greater freedom over financial and development decisions. Hall is appealing that order and also plans to fight Century’s attempt to have the consent decree discarded.

In response, Norris contends that Century has more than met the demands of the consent decree that created it in 1979. More than 5,300 units of affordable housing have been built to house those displaced by the construction of the freeway, though only 3,700 units originally were required.

Of the remaining funds, Century Housing officials say that more than half of that money is committed to building already-planned projects and maintaining older projects.

With the remainder, they want to go forward in investing and leveraging the funds, and use the profits to continue building affordable housing throughout Southern California.

Using all the money now “is very impractical and inefficient and it would be a tremendous loss to Los Angeles when we know there are no new funds on the horizon from Washington or Sacramento for affordable housing in Los Angeles,” Norris said.

But Hall said that there might be another reason Century Housing Corp. officials want to have the lawsuit dismissed: It would keep them in business.

“Part of the attitude is clearly job preservation,” Hall said. “(But) the real issue is power, and money is power.”

Century Housing employs 36 people in the areas of contract monitoring, property management, construction supervision, real estate finance, resident services, legal services, accounting, administration and management.

But Norris said that the issue is not jobs or power, but rather providing affordable housing throughout Southern California many years into the future something which he said is sorely needed.

“I think that Mr. Hall is a very energetic advocate,” Norris said. “But he has limited himself to the set of solutions looking to the past instead of recognizing the realties of the present.”

William Brennan, deputy secretary and special counsel of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees the Century Freeway case for the state, supports dismissal of the lawsuit. He said most of the plaintiffs are gone only two are still alive and live in the area and that the only beneficiary is Hall, who collects attorney fees from Century Housing Corp. when he contests a project.

“The only thing the plaintiffs are around for is a continuation of their attorney’s fees, because that’s all they’re bringing to the table,” Brennan said. “Attorney fees could be turned around and invested in more affordable housing.”

But Hall disputes the accusation. “It’s preposterous and ugly of them to say that we’re motivated by the fees,” he said.

In the fourth quarter of 1996, Hall said he received $25,000 in fees from Century Housing, but spent $160,000 in attorney hours fighting the corporation.

The housing corporation had its origins in 1972, when a dozen homeowners and a group of organizations the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Freeway Fighters sued to stop the construction of a freeway running from Los Angeles International airport to just east of Downey.

They said that the freeway would displace thousands of residents of low-cost apartments and houses in areas such as Lynwood, South Gate and South Central L.A. After seven years of negotiations, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs agreed to the freeway’s construction, as long as the state created a program to provide 3,700 units of low-cost housing. The result was the state-run Century Freeway Housing Program, which evolved into the non-profit Century Housing Corp.

Geraldine R. Washington, president of the Los Angeles NAACP, said she would have “some serious reservations about dismissing the original guidelines from the consent decree” without assurances that Century has fulfilled all its obligations.

Stanley Hart, chairman of the transportation committee of the Sierra Club’s Angeles chapter, said he had not been informed of the case by Sierra Club’s attorneys, but would look into the matter.

“I’m not sure that I would want to venture an opinion until I saw the details,” Hart said.