February 17, 1983

ARLINE FEINBERG learned to bide her time. For 23 years she lived in Westchester with her husband and their two children and waited for the time she would be able to move into Manhattan. While she waited she visited show houses and studied decorating magazines -always looking for the designer who would create the ''perfect'' penthouse for her family's needs. Mrs. Feinberg began her journey to Manhattan in earnest two and a half years ago. As soon as her co-op - a 3,000-square-foot penthouse with an unusual 2,000-square-foot walled-in terrace - was in hand, she proceeded to sell the entire contents of her suburban house. ''Sheets, towels, dishes, flatware, everything,'' she said. ''It was time for a change. I kept only my good china and crystal, and I didn't give away my family photographs.''

The Nigerian economy is in deep trouble. When the Government laid out its current five-year development plan, the forecast for 1983 was that production of high-priced oil, at two million barrels a day, would earn the nation $30 billion. As world oil markets faltered last year, the forecast was trimmed in November in an austerity budget based on production of a million barrels a day. At the time, industry analysts reckoned that, for the first quarter of 1983 at least, black Africa's largest oil producer would be able to pump 1.3 million barrels a day, about the December level.

Tales of paper shredders, charges of mismanagement and corruption, refusal by a President to turn over certain documents. These and other elements give the current dispute over the Environmental Protection Agency a familiar ring to followers of scandals in Washington. But the ingredients of the controversy over the environmental agency are as bewildering as they are familiar. Even those involved in the matter acknowledge that many of the charges are based on supposition. The conflict had reached a boiling point when the Administration, according to sources involved in the dispute, relented today and agreed to provide documents that it had withheld from Congressional investigators. Much about what has occurred in the agency in the last two years remains the subject of angry charges and countercharges. To clear up the confusion, no fewer than six Congressional committees have started investigations of the activities of the environmental agency.

The staff of the State Financial Control Board cited ''sound grounds for optimism about the city's future'' yesterday and recommended that Mayor Koch's preliminary budget be approved. Reacting to the Mayor's tentative $16.5 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 and to an overall financial plan running through fiscal year 1986, the staff projected that New York would have $65 million more to spend in the next fiscal year than the city's budget office had listed. 'Some Selected Restoration' It said the projected surplus assumed ''enactment of the state's fiscal year 1984 budget substantially as proposed.'' The city's budget forecast had come in a mid-January report that called for service cuts, new taxes and thousands of layoffs. But yesterday, the city's Budget Director, Alair A. Townsend, described that package as a ''worst case'' scenario and predicted that the city would be able to make ''some selected restorations in areas of the worst pain.''

Housing starts soared a record 35.9 percent in January to an annual rate of 1.72 million units, the highest since September 1979, the Commerce Department reported today. Last month's unusually good weather, lower mortgage interest rates and builders' confidence in economic recovery were the main factors, the department said. At the same time, builders applied for 15.9 percent more building permits in January, signaling an intention to keep the housing boom going.