"Most of the apartments have a window on just one side. The interior facing rooms on the lower floors are going to have a lot of trouble getting light in. With a window on only one side, you can't ventilate your apartment by opening windows on multiple sides. This increases the demand for HVAC, which increases the cost of living."
I doubt A/C costs are anything but negligible compared to the other design decisions.
This is someone who is just looking for an excuse to not like the apartment.
"there is a reduction of 90% of hours of a possible use of mechanical ventilation, showing the feasibility to achieve thermal comfort within the house by using passive ventilation"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...
" Indoor thermal conditions were found to be within the comfort zone for more than 70% of the time under cross ventilation operation while single-sided ventilation provided adequate thermal conditions for only 1% of the time. Results from this study highlight a significantly better performance of cross ventilation over single-sided ventilation." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787...
And the difference is A/C is paid by the renter not the building owner. If you want to address cost of living one thing we could do is make it easier to have the wind cool down apartment buildings.