November 15, 1984

President Reagan met today with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Robert C. McFarlane, the national security adviser, to discuss how to revive arms control talks with the Soviet Union. This was the first detailed discussion Mr. Reagan has had on foreign affairs since his re-election last Tuesday. Administration officials said the emphasis was on relations with the Soviet Union over the next four years and, in particular, on how to revive the suspended talks. Mr. Reagan said throughout the campaign and in his first news conference after his victory that he planned to give the highest priority to seeking arms reductions with the Soviet Union. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said before the session that no decisions were expected from the meeting. Rather, he said, ''it was an opportunity for them to brief him on the direction of their thinking, and at some time in the future he would give them directions.''

THEIR numbers having grown from only a handful a decade ago to more than 250 now, citizen-run nursing-home-information organizations throughout the country are acting as consumer watchdogs and public advocates for the more than 1.4 million elderly residents in America's long-term-care facilities. Staffed primarily by volunteers, and independent of both government and the health-care industry, these citizens' organizations have gained new prominence as the nation's population grows older. Experts say their importance may increase as rising numbers of the elderly compete for beds in good-quality homes, as the cost of care in those institutions spirals higher. In a number of states, the groups' activities have brought them into confrontations with nursing-home operators and regulatory agencies. While some citizens' groups have sued to force nursing homes to comply with state laws, other organizations have been sued, in turn, by the nursing homes they've criticized.

An article in Business Day on Saturday about Intelsat, the satellite communications consortium, misidentified the director general. He is Richard R. Colino.

An article in Business Day on Oct. 25 about the Control Data Corporation misstated its involvement in the disk drive business. The company has announced that it will stop making disk drives for large I.B.M. computers.

The fire started in the basement of the East Harlem apartment building, and by the time the firefighters brought it under control yesterday morning, 58 more families had been added to the growing list of poor people in New York who have no homes and little chance of finding them soon. ''I don't know where I'm going to go,'' said Eva Green, who is 73 years old and had spent the last 10 years living in the walk-up building at 80 East 116th Street, near her friends and just up the street from the market and the stores that sell just about anything she could need. Miss Green and her neighbors - 94 men and women and 54 children - gathered anxiously yesterday morning in the basement of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church at 113 East 117th Street, waiting to find out from the Red Cross where they would be sheltered that night, tonight and on subsequent nights. 'No Housing for the Poor' ''The sad fact of life is that these people have now joined other homeless people looking for housing that for the most part doesn't exist in this city,'' a Red Cross spokesman, Fred Yaeger, said yesterday. Most of the families had been placed temporarily in tourist-class hotels in midtown by the end of the day, he said.