Thirty demonstrators were arrested last week while trying to prevent the eviction of a woman from an apartment building owned by Columbia University.

Columbia is trying to evict Susana Acosta Jaafar because she does not have a lease, university spokesmen said. The eviction reflects the university's most recent effort to meet what it calls a growing need to find housing for its students, employees and faculty, The New York Times reported.

At the same time, community groups have criticized the university for what they call its insensitivity to the people who live in areas surrounding it.

Acosta said that she has a lease on the apartment. But university officials said that her lease expired in 1978.

The protesters arrested were part of the Columbia University Fair Housing for All Coalition, which includes students, faculty, members and community residents.

Acosta, an accountant at the university controller's office since 1974, was eligible for university housing until 1983, when Columbia was forced to restrict its definition for housing eligibility to full-time students, senior administrators and faculty.