I think there's maybe a bit too much vested in the term "irrelevant" and the context around this. I suspect the OP meant the conditional to read something like:

I think there's maybe a bit too much vested in the term "irrelevant" and the context around this. I suspect the OP meant the conditional to read something like: IF shelter is unaffordable THEN smartphones being cheap is irrelevant ASSUMING opportunities from the smartphone don't make housing affordable. Like if someone says if you're starving, being a millionaire is irrelevant - the assumption would be that that money cannot be used to buy food. Of course I 100% agree that a phone can be used to improve your situation, and I'm sure the OP agrees as well. But a phone isn't enough to be able to go find housing for most people. While it can help you find cheaper shelter, or maybe over time allow you to learn skills that lead to better paying job opportunities that allow you to afford housing, you wouldn't need any of that if housing was simply affordable in the first place. Ultimately OP isn't saying phones suck and homeless people should sell their phones for a couple nights in a shelter. What they're saying is that phones being cheap does not make up for housing being expensive - no matter how useful the phone is, ultimately the end goal is to have shelter, and if you can't afford shelter then it doesn't matter how cheap anything else is.