April 30, 1989

LEAD: The Gramm-Rudman law to reduce the budget deficit requires a balanced budget by 1993. Under the act, next year's deficit target is $100 billion - which was met earlier this month in an agreement between Congress and the Bush Administration. Critics argue that the act is flawed and that the budget agreement was achieved through accounting tricks.

LEAD: They are arriving in the United States in increasing numbers and participating in a wider variety of sports, amateur and professional athletes from the Soviet Union doing their part to make perestroika a success. It is a friendly invasion and one of the more visible signs of the political and economic reforms initiated by the Soviet leader, Mikhail S.

LEAD: The concept of shared responsibility for residential properties is spreading, with homeowners associations being created to bear the costs of landscaping and maintenance even before houses are built.

LEAD: CITY officials are working here to develop the Congaree Vista, 800 acres in a mile-and-a-half-long, mile-wide stretch along the east bank of the Congaree River. The tract is now a crazy-quilt of parks, industrial warehouses, office buildings, vacant lots, a water-treatment plant, the Governor's Mansion and the Central Correctional

LEAD: The roster of American corporations that invest in low-income rental housing is expanding as a result of tax legislation that lets them do well by doing good.