By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Beverly Thompson returned from work one day recently to find chunks of living room ceiling splattered across her couch.

She's also endured faulty wiring, mold and a gaping 2-foot hole in a bedroom wall, but this was the last straw in her 15-year battle with a landlord who wants her out of the rent-controlled apartment where she's lived for 28 years.

As conditions worsen, the Public Health Nurse asks: "Why should I be punished because I've stayed in one place?"

Housing violations are apparent in the $550-a-month, six-and-a-half room apartment in a once well-kept building with mirrors and a marble fireplace in its foyer. As the landlord pushes to deregulate the building's 25 apartments, Ms. Thompson and residents like her say they are being pushed out. "Harlem is coming back," Ms. Thompson said, "but not for working families. If this apartment is deregulated, I'd have to take another job just to pay rent or move."

Ms. Thompson and her neighbor, 40-year resident Joyce Nurse, a DC 37 retiree whose apartment is as bad as Thompson's, live in the historic district of Hamilton Heights. The neighborhood is being gentrified.

Their landlord harasses older tenants. "Newer ones are afraid, they don't know their rights and they don't realize they don't have to live like this," Ms. Thompson said. In some cases, three families share an apartment for $1,400 a month.

The residents of Hamilton Place are not alone. Recent legislation has chipped away at rent regulation laws and fattened landlords' pockets citywide. The dwindling supply of affordable housing stock is slipping away from most low-, moderate- and middle-income residents.

Fundamental need
Recent events like 9/11 and the city's fiscal crisis "should not overshadow residents' fundamental need for decent, affordable and well-maintained housing," said Ralph Carbone, president of Rent Regulation Services Employees Local 1359. On Feb. 27, he testified on housing before a state legislative committee
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Because rent regulation laws are set to expire June 15, 2003, the DC 37 Housing Committee is pushing renewal to the forefront of the 2002 political agenda.

"To put off renewing rent regulation until next year," said Housing Committee Chair Barry Jamison, "compounds the uncertainty for tenants, DC 37 members and millions of residents affected by such laws. It jeopardizes the availability of affordable housing statewide, and threatens the jobs of 450 Local 1359 members, who administer the rent laws for the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal."

"This issue should be addressed in 2002," Jamison said, "when all state Legislature seats come up for re-election."

Gov. George E. Pataki asked legislators to "do more to make sure that the high cost of housing doesn't force working people to leave the neighborhoods where they grew up."

But tenants say his words fall flat as landlords push rents through the roof in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side, Park Slope, Alphabet City and Harlem.

Each year New York City loses about 150,000 units of regulated housing - a loss roughly equivalent to wiping out Co-op City every month.

Save rent regulations
"We must stop the trend of losing rent-regulated apartments now," said Mr. Jamison. "All DC 37 members should be part of this struggle. We will have to pool our resources to win this one."