City Journal by Christopher F. Rufo, Austen Hufford 5/27/2026
California advocates wanted to provide solar panels to 1 million low-income housing residents. After ten years, the state is more than 900,000 short of that goal.Governor Gavin Newsom has dismissed fossil fuels as “alternative energy,” and wants to power California with, among other things, the sun. Through extensive mandates and extra energy costs for non-solar consumers, the Newsom administration has directed billions to building solar energy capacity.
The centerpiece of this initiative is the Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program. SOMAH began under Governor Jerry Brown, who signed legislation requiring a state commission to apportion up to $100 million a year from California’s cap-and-trade program to pay for the installation of solar panels on apartment buildings in poor areas. Since then, California has devoted nearly $900 million to SOMAH, which the state hoped would create 300 megawatts of power by 2030 and advocates envisioned would create a million solar-using renters.
The results have been disastrous. Since 2015, the program has installed or reserved only 129 megawatts of solar power for approximately 65,600 residents—nowhere close to the target of 1 million “solar renters.”
What happened? First, incompetence. For a decade, businesses and utilities have been forced to buy emissions credits, and while the state has lavished nearly $900 million on SOMAH, administrators designed the program so poorly that they have paid out only $131 million for solar installation.
As the program’s largest contractor admitted in a draft audit, potential customers were turned off by the paperwork, bureaucracy, and red tape. “Initially, we found housing owners excited about the program,” the contractor said, “but after a long and laborious process, they are much less enthusiastic.”
That is an understatement. From the beginning, the SOMAH program has been plagued by delays and cancellations. More than 400 applications have wound up cancelled or withdrawn, or about a third of the total. On average, projects take three and a half years to make it through the program’s gauntlet of paperwork and inspections.
More:
https://www.city-journal.org/article/california-gavin-newsom-solar-panels-affordable-housing-somah
