It seems like the last breaths of the “do no evil” mantra. Your other options are like Fairphone or the yet to be released Hiroh phone with /e/os which is another flavor of degoogled android.
At the moment Pixel phones are the easiest for people in the US market to degoogle
The flip side is when your state mandates allowing 4-6 homes on regular SFH plots and then your property value goes up because you can now build more housing
The alternative is that nothing gets built and people compete for the existing stock which drives up prices anyway
New construction is always more expensive. We should keep building anyway. The new construction of today becomes more affordable over time.
If you build enough housing it gets back into being economically competitive for the average person to own their home. Speculators can speculate until it doesn’t make sense any more.
We got into the current situation because we slowed way down on building homes.
I really don’t see how building more houses/units is not the solution, at least in some cases. I live in a VHCOL area and we straight up have a housing shortage for a variety of reasons.
It really isn’t, the area I grew up in has a ton of empty houses because people do not want to live there due to a lack of jobs and opportunity in general. The area I live in now has tons of NIMBYs blocking new housing development despite there being tons of jobs and opportunity.
This is like removing the requirement of having curb ramps on new sidewalks because it makes it possible for people in wheelchairs to navigate