Older housing stock creates major barriers to electrification and resilience upgrades. Many homes require costly pre-work such as electrical panel upgrades, insulation improvements, and appliance replacement before zero-emission systems can be installed, making retrofits difficult to scale and disproportionately burdening low- and moderate-income households without affordability-first program design.

• Illustrative example: In San Diego an estimated 800,000 buildings built before 1978 lack the electrical capacity or structural readiness for electrification, driving up retrofit costs and extending permitting timelines for clean-energy upgrades.