This is primarily a student-occupied building, in the university district. My strong suspicion is that the other occupants of the building are young and healthy, and just shrug and take the stairs whenever the elevator's out, without having any need to worry about it.

Which is fine. But if one is going to count on that, AND going to have a designated handicapped-accessible apartment, that apartment should be on the ground floor. And this building was not designed to have any apartments on the ground floor at all... just the garage, the leasing office, and the mailboxes.