Build differently. It’s that simple. Our ancestors figured it out for 100k years
Yes, it is an option to revert to living in houses with earth floors, and no electricity, plumbing, or running water. My family has a cabin like that (sans the earth floor). I love staying there, and could probably build one in a year with a friend or two.
It doesn't really scale well though, so cities are out of the picture. Besides, it goes against the premise of something that works without drastically altering society. While there were large cities in earlier times (e.g. Rome around AD 0), these were largely built by slave labour. In earlier times, cities were also famous for offering terrible, cramped living conditions for common people, and disease was rife, due to inadequate waste management and clean water supply.
So yes, our ancestors "figured it out for 100k years", in the sense that they figured out how to build cramped, disease ridden cities using slave labour (alternatively near-slave workers). It's not feasible to house the modern world population on dispersed farms (the "Amish" solution), we need towns/cities.
In the end, the solutions you're pointing to would work for a far smaller global population, but not today. Even at 1700's level populations (roughly 7.5 % of the current), you would need to accept 1700's level living conditions. Whether we should drastically reduce living conditions in order to reduce the cost of housing and infrastructure is a fair debate to have, but a completely different one than the one at hand.