You or your tenant should not be responsible for the cost.I agree with John, get copies of your previous electric bills, submit them to the HOA and or the utility company and explain to them the reason for the bill doubling. 

For this reason I do not think I would be able to get into rentals at this point.

As far as a multi, personally if all things were equal I'd go for the multi for a few reasons.  1) Added diversification.. if one tenant doesn't pay, you can still cover property expenses with the other tenants 2) Shared capex... typically, one roof and one property to maintain but multiple streams of income 3) Less vacancy.. usually multi's rent for lower, for example one of mine is the sweet spot of 3 bedrooms for $1300. 

And true, “Love” Is strong.

Is that true?

The only reasonable solution would be to use street parking since it is a city.I will definitely look into this though.

They then make assumptions that you are capable of taking 100% of the added depreciation, which may or may not be true.

My jurisdiction has reasonable rules that I cannot charge more than the utilities cost and algorithm is to be fairish. 

If the parts of your budget are true and not made of assumptions you can easily proceed.

Gas can be similar if both have the same heating systems. 60-40 is pretty close and unless the gas and/or water goes way up for some reason, it’s pretty fair.