§ Drain the Swamp · CA Gov. Newsom (D) · SOMAH Solar Program

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$900 million collected to bring solar to one million low-income renters.
A decade later: 65,600 got it. The rest went to Newsom’s donors.

California’s Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program — SOMAH — launched in 2015 with a promise backed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA): use cap-and-trade ratepayer funds to put solar panels on low-income apartment buildings and cut the electric bills of one million Californians who can least afford them. Over a decade and $900 million in ratepayer money later, fewer than 66,000 households have received solar. The rest of the money cycled through a network of program administrators, nonprofits, and contractors with documented financial ties to Newsom and the California Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the same CPUC Newsom stacked with appointees unanimously passed NEM 3.0 — slashing the rate utilities must pay rooftop solar owners by 75–80%, wiping out 17,000 solar jobs and driving three-quarters of the state’s solar installers to the brink of bankruptcy. The three investor-owned utilities that benefited are also major Newsom donors.

• $900M+allocated to SOMAH since 2015; only $131M paid for actual installations — CPUC SOMAH Second Triennial Report (2023)
• 6.6%of promised beneficiaries served — 65,600 of 1,000,000 low-income renters — CPUC Triennial Report / City Journal
• 78%of SOMAH contracts controlled by Sunrun — which donated $50,000 to Newsom campaigns — City Journal / CPUC Triennial Report
• 17,000solar jobs lost after NEM 3.0 (2023); 80% drop in installation permits — Environmental Working Group (Dec. 2023)
• $8.5Bannual cost to non-solar California ratepayers from the NEM solar cross-subsidy — CPUC Public Advocates Office (Aug. 2024)
• $0.35average cost per kWh in California — 100% above the national average of $0.17 — U.S. Energy Information Administration

One million renters promised solar. 93.4% still waiting after a decade.

The Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing program was written into California law in 2015 and funded through the state’s cap-and-trade system — a mechanism that charges industrial polluters for their emissions and routes the proceeds into clean-energy programs. SOMAH’s design was straightforward: take a slice of those proceeds, use them to subsidize rooftop solar installations on low-income apartment buildings, and pass the bill savings to tenants. The program’s stated goal was solar access for one million low-income California renters — a population excluded from the state’s existing rooftop solar programs, which were structured for homeowners.

According to the CPUC’s own SOMAH Second Triennial Report (2023), the program has delivered solar to approximately 65,600 households — 6.6% of its stated target. The program has collected and disbursed more than $900 million in ratepayer funds since launch, but only $131 million of that total has gone to actual solar panel installations. The remainder has flowed through program administration, nonprofit coordination fees, and contractor overhead — none of which put a single watt of solar capacity on a low-income building.

CAL DOGE — the California government accountability project launched by the Newsom administration’s critics — obtained internal program documents and found that a significant share of the non-installation spending went to political nonprofit organizations whose primary activities involve voter registration and endorsements for progressive candidates. Steve Hilton, who runs CAL DOGE, described the program in unambiguous terms: “$928 million has been stolen. Your money. Do you know where it’s gone? Voter registration.”

“$928 million has been stolen. Your money. Do you know where it's gone? Voter registration.”

Steve Hilton, CAL DOGE — on the SOMAH program's non-installation spending

Sunrun: 78% of contracts, $50K to Newsom, two executives placed inside state agencies.

Of the $131 million that SOMAH actually spent on solar installations, Sunrun— the nation’s largest residential solar installer — controls 78% of all SOMAH project contracts. Sunrun donated $50,000 to Governor Gavin Newsom’s campaigns. Following those donations, the Newsom administration placed two former Sunrun executives into California state energy agencies. Noemí Otilia Osuna Gallardo, a former Sunrun senior manager, was appointed to the California Energy Commission (confirmed January 2024) — the agency that oversees the state’s energy policy, including SOMAH’s enabling framework.

The program’s administrative structure compounded the conflict-of-interest problem. SOMAH’s designated program administrator was GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit solar installation organization. At the time GRID Alternatives administered the program, its Chief Policy Officer, Chris Walker, simultaneously served as SOMAH’s program director — a dual role in which the same individual both advocated for the program’s policy direction and oversaw its day-to-day operations. Independent oversight was structurally absent.

The nonprofit layer below GRID Alternatives deepened the political entanglement. The California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) co-authored the legislation that created SOMAH, then became a coordinating organization for the program. CEJA received approximately $230,000 in SOMAH program fees. CEJA has never installed a single solar panel. Its affiliated 501(c)(4), CEJA Action, endorsed 24 progressive candidates in the 2024 election cycle. The Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) received $163,000 in SOMAH fees; its co-director has stated the organization’s mission includes “fighting against white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism.”

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Five Newsom CPUC appointees. One unanimous vote. 17,000 solar jobs gone.

In April 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to adopt the revised Net Energy Metering rules — NEM 3.0 — which cut the rate at which utilities must compensate rooftop solar owners for power they export back to the grid by 75–80%. All five CPUC commissioners who voted for NEM 3.0 were appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA). The commission’s president at the time of the vote, Alice Reynolds, was a former Newsom energy advisor before her CPUC appointment.

The economic consequence was rapid and severe. According to the Environmental Working Group, California’s rooftop solar industry lost 17,000 jobs in 2023 — a direct result of the demand collapse triggered by NEM 3.0. Solar installation permit filings dropped by approximately 80% in the months following the rule change. By January 2024, EWG reported that 75% of California’s rooftop solar companies were classified as “high risk” for bankruptcy.

The three investor-owned utilities that benefit most from NEM 3.0 — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — are also major donors to California Democratic candidates, including Newsom. NEM 3.0 protects these utilities’ customer revenue base by making rooftop solar a less attractive investment, reducing self-generation competition. The CPUC Public Advocates Office has separately calculated that the legacy NEM solar cross-subsidy program costs non-solar California ratepayers approximately $8.5 billion annually— a transfer from the state’s lowest-income households, who cannot afford rooftop solar, to its wealthiest, who installed it before NEM 3.0.

“The fraud capital of the US.” Republican legislators. CAL DOGE. A sitting congressman. All pointing at the same receipts.

Republican accountability for SOMAH and NEM 3.0 has come from multiple vectors. In the state legislature, Sen. Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) has argued that the SOMAH program’s outcome is a direct consequence of what he describes as Democrats’ “unstoppable spending problems” — where program design is driven by political stakeholder relationships rather than delivery outcomes, and accountability mechanisms are either absent or captured by the same parties receiving the funds.

At the federal level, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) has called for a federal investigation into California fraud, citing SOMAH and related programs as evidence of a systemic failure in how California handles ratepayer and taxpayer funds routed through politically connected nonprofit intermediaries. Kiley has stated directly that “California is absolutely the fraud capital of the US.”

“California is absolutely the fraud capital of the US.”

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) — Press Release calling for federal investigation into California fraud

$0.35 per kilowatt-hour. Double the national average. Paid by the people SOMAH was supposed to help.

The compounding effect of SOMAH’s delivery failure and NEM 3.0’s job destruction lands on the same population SOMAH was designed to help: low-income California renters. California’s average retail electricity rate of $0.35 per kilowatt-hour is approximately 100% above the national average of $0.17/kWh. That gap compounds every month on the electricity bills of the 935,000 low-income renters who were promised SOMAH solar access and did not receive it.

The CPUC Public Advocates Office — a consumer-advocacy office within the CPUC itself — has calculated that the legacy NEM solar cross-subsidy structure forces non-solar California ratepayers to subsidize solar owners to the tune of $8.5 billion annually. The cross-subsidy runs from lower-income households to higher-income households: solar panel ownership in California is concentrated in wealthier ZIP codes, while non-solar ratepayers are disproportionately lower-income renters in multifamily buildings — the exact population SOMAH claimed it would help. The program collected the money, enriched its political allies, delivered solar to 6.6% of its target population, and then restructured the rate system in a way that transfers billions annually from the households it left behind to the households that did not need the program’s help.

The program collected the money. Paid Newsom’s donors. Enriched political nonprofits. And left 935,000 low-income renters with the highest electric bills in the country.

The documented record of SOMAH is not a story of a well-intentioned program that ran into implementation difficulties. It is a story of a program whose design, administration, and oversight were structured around the political and financial relationships of the California Democratic Party. The program’s primary beneficiaries — Sunrun ($131M in installations, $50K to Newsom, two executives in state agencies), CEJA ($230K in fees, zero solar panels installed, 24 progressive endorsements), APEN ($163K in fees, political mission statements) — are documented.

The program’s nominal beneficiaries — one million low-income California renters promised solar access — received it at a rate of 6.6%. The gap between those two numbers is the story: $769 million that did not put solar panels on affordable housing, channeled instead through a network of politically connected intermediaries whose primary activity was not solar installation.

And when the CPUC — five commissioners, all Newsom appointees — voted unanimously to cut rooftop solar compensation by 75–80% in 2023, they destroyed the private-market incentives that might have delivered what the public program failed to provide. Seventeen thousand solar workers lost their jobs. Three-quarters of the state’s solar installers were pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. The utilities that benefit from reduced solar competition — and that donated to Newsom — were protected. Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has offered no public accounting for any of this.

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