The amount of available space isn't the only benefit of using only one staircase. It also means the units can face outward in multiple directions and there's a more central common area.
No one should be surprised that fire safety laws are going to the extreme for safety at a large cost to floor space.
On a totally different note, I can't find any cheap or affordable new cars. Am looking for basic wheels without finicky gadgets like backup cameras and tire pressure monitors and lane departure warnings. Something simple and without high insurance costs to cover all those gadgets I don't need.
I wonder why things (house, car) seem unaffordable and contain gadgets which are difficult to fix and which increase insurance costs. What happened America?
And the still working quite far back vehicles are pretty valuable because they have stood the test of time and don’t have all the buzzword crap, so folks don’t want to part with them.
The old cheap ones also got fed into a grinder (essentially) for cash for clunkers.
If fire advocates really cared they would figure out the rules to follow and that would make it much cheaper for everyone.