Yes, rooftop solar benefits poor communities (often people of color), because pollutant belching power plants are often built where they live, and PV reduces the need for output from those plants.
Or, rooftop solar causes poor people to unfairly have to subsidize the grid for rich people.
It just depends on who you ask.
I suppose we could offer reparations in the form of not enforcing laws against tampering with or bypassing meters.
But seriously - all we need is a way to invest in (buy shares in) utility scale solar and have the generation credits applied to our utility bill. That would be available to renters. And everyone. You could scale your personal portion of the PV system up and down as you grow in needs or become more efficient.
Hell, let's just go back to having a publicly traded company that owns both generation and distribution. Anybody can simply buy shares of stock and receive cash dividends for its profit. Spend however you like, maybe on your utility bill. What does anything have to be more complicated than that, with incentives, rebates, and all that?
I'm going to make some assumptions about you.
1. You have never been poor.
I'll summarise your post as, "The opportunities to make money are there for all, so if they haven't done it, they are obviously stupid or lazy".
Most people see prosperity and opportunity as being directly linked. Thing is, they are in feedback with each other. Similarly fortune and income are related and in feedback with each other.
A lot of people then see this as a scale of degrees of "how high up" the ladder you are. "How well you did"
What not a lot of people, unless you have stood on both sides realise, it's not a scale of 0-100. It's a scale of -50 to 50.
When you reach a certain low point your opportunities start to diminish. Doors close. Entry rungs on ladders are out of reach. You "look poor", you "live in the wrong nieghbourhood", "You don't have a car". The scale goes negative.
When your fortune falls to £-3.51 that first month out of work and the bank slap a £30 fine in... then another £30 at the end of the month, your £65 welfare check gets swallowed. You have no income, so nobody is going to lend you money. Basically credit is only provided to those who don't actually need it.
So these basic "available all opportunities" are not in fact open to all. That is the illusion the rich and here we call them "Tories" believe. Most are just too out of touch with the real world.
When I was 16 I recall toasting dry bread on a single electric bar fire. It was 12*C inside. I wasn't meant to be using the fire, but ... I was the only one in the house and when the 50p coin slot meter ran out, I could just play cards, it was daylight. Mum would come home soon, she would have found a tenner for some food and electric, she always seemed to manage it, borrowing, working herself to death, etc. etc. On pay day she paid everyone back and bought us a chinese take away for dinner. By Monday it was back to borrowing and sitting in the cold and dark again.
Today I work in tier 1 investment banks writing software. I passed £60k a years ago. I now move pay rises into pension to save tax.
So I have sat on both sides of that 0 point. I understand the currents. I swam against them, but I was lucky, I had a gift and i was lucky I landed one or two opportunities without which I would still be living back with my Mum and Brother. They are better today, but not by much. I never ask for it back when they ask to borrow.