Electric Optional Design
If you do it right, residents shouldn't NEED electricity.
They can get meals from eateries nearby, stay adequately warm or cool due to passive solar design, have daylighting and go to a library to charge their phone or laptop.
They ideally should have access to electricity in the units if they want it and can afford it, but electricity can be entirely optional for residents if you do it right in most places, though maybe not in winter in extremely cold places. I haven't adequately researched solutions for extremely cold places, so I don't really know what the parameters are.
In ancient Rome under the Roman empire, apartment buildings were up to seven stories tall but lacked cooking facilities because they were still cooking with fire and couldn't put fireplaces in a seven story building. So residents got meals from vendors on the street, very similar to getting hot dogs on the streets of New York.
The plan is to have vending machine lunches on site, nearby eateries in walking distance, food delivery options and nearby grocery stores.
If you live alone, cooking for one takes about as much time as cooking for a family and it's challenging to do it affordably because things go bad if you buy in bulk and cost more if you buy in small sizes. It can make more sense to find other ways to try to feed yourself if it's a household of one to three people, which is what these units are intended to serve.
That's without getting into questions of the cost of good quality cookware, which can be substantial, and the time, money and effort involved in learning to be a good cook who is knowledgeable about nutrition, food safety, etc. One of the full-time homemakers I knew growing up had gone to cooking school but then got married rather than becoming a professional chef.
Being a homemaker is a specialized career involving quite a lot of different skills and doesn't really make sense for the individual, the family or society if she's not cooking, cleaning, etc. for a large family. There's a large uncounted cost involved in the assumption that cooking from scratch is the cheapest option.
It is when "mom" does it for a family of twelve. Not so much if you live alone or are a single mom with one child.
For a fairly cheap, no-cook real meal prepared at home, cold prep ramen with dried veggies or fresh veggies bought the same day only requires water, no cooking and no fridge*. Then you can fill out much of the rest of your diet with shelf stable options like babybel cheese, jerky, crackers, dried fruit and assorted healthy snacks.
I've been in a hotel for months. I order in one hot meal a day most days, sometimes two, for the three of us plus I typically eat somewhere when I go shopping. I have lots of shelf stable options to feed us the other two meals a day, such as potato chips with beef jerky, corn chips plus cheese, dried fruit, chocolate, sodas, Cheetos and popcorn.
It's not bottom of the barrel cheap but it's also not crazy expensive. And it's not a nutritional disaster either, nor does it feel like we are particularly deprived.
Historically, homes were passive solar design by default. The Rural Electricification Act was passed in the USA May 20, 1936, less than 90 years ago, so it wasn't that long ago that many Americans had no electricity at home and now we have designed our lives around requiring electricity for essentials like not freezing to death in winter.
Unsurprisingly, it's a huge crisis and things fall apart and people die when the latest storm knocks out electricity. When I was a kid, that was more like "Darn! Can't watch TV for a bit." not "Grandma's freezing to death somewhere." because homes were designed by default to be cool in summer with a cross breeze from open windows, warm in winter and have light from windows without electricity.
At one time, electric HVAC and electric lights enhanced what we had. They weren't essential to function at all.
Additionally, shelf stable foods were the default norm, not items requiring a cold storage supply chain. In a serious crisis, you broke out the grill to cook until power came back on.
My father was born on a farm in the 1920s. He grew up in a log cabin with a dirt floor and shared an unheated room with an uncle where snowdrifts formed inside the room in winter from cracks in the walls.
He lived in circumstances that would likely kill a lot of Americans today or land them in the ER because that was normal to them and they knew how to stay adequately warm in those circumstances.
I don't expect any American builder to take me seriously that it's possible to design residential rental units that are perfectly serviceable for eating, sleeping etc. without electricity but if you are someplace like parts of Africa without ready access to reliable electrical service, this project can be adapted to your needs to make sure people can eat, sleep and stay comfortable 24/7 and charge their phone at a service or when the wonky electric service does happen to be available for a few hours.
Ideally, the building has juice to provide reliable hot water. In the US, water is typically not a separate charge in a rented apartment.
But if individual units can't afford electricity, it shouldn't be a disaster. Just a small inconvenience they need to work around if they have modern amenities like a phone that requires charging.
This would help provide economic stability and disaster proofing in our increasingly storm-prone era of human-caused climate change. I think it makes sense anywhere on the planet but I'm not laying bets any "developed" countries will embrace the concept.
Footnote
* In a dry enough climate, you can do non-electric cold storage via zeer or pot-in-pot refrigerator. It's an evaporative cooling system, similar in principle to a swamp cooler which is an air conditioner alternative used in dry climates like California.