In 1999, the web worked very well with servers hosted from people's basement. I think if you got a start there, evolving your server infrastructure over time in a financially sustainable way was possible. Now the web demands speed and availability. It seems like nostr relays are especially demanding for speed. Residential ISPs have made it difficult to run personal servers in-house, but perhaps taking a free relay straight to cloud infra is the expensive and unsustainable path.