California’s 2025 EV Mandate Could Price Low-Income Renters Out Of Affordable Housing

California’s push to get more electric vehicles on the road is creating a tough problem for people who rent their homes. The state’s 2025 CalGreen Code now requires new apartment buildings to have EV chargers in their parking spaces. Experts say this rule could make affordable housing even harder to build and find.

The new rules are strict. Every assigned parking space needs a charging outlet. Half of all unassigned spaces need full chargers. Chargers often require connections to building electrical panels. For large apartment complexes, these requirements can add hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs.

Every assigned parking space needs a charger. For large complexes, that requirement alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The electrical work alone is a huge expense. Buildings often need double the electrical service they currently have. Transformers need to get bigger. The entire electrical system needs upgrades. Older rental buildings weren’t built to handle this kind of power demand.

The costs hit affordable housing projects especially hard. Low-income housing gets no exceptions under the current rules. Industry concerns indicate investors are already pulling money away from these projects, and some new affordable housing construction has stopped completely because of these added expenses. That means fewer homes for people who need them most.

There’s also a mismatch between who the chargers are for and who actually rents apartments. Renters are far less likely to own EVs than homeowners. Low-income tenants can’t usually afford expensive electric vehicles. Analysts expect many may opt for hybrids instead of fully electric cars. Recent data shows EV sales have also slowed down since a spike in 2023.

California needs 313,000 EV chargers at apartments and condos by 2030. Only 26,000 were installed as of 2023. The gap is enormous.

Lawmakers are trying to help. AB 2748 would exempt new affordable housing from the EV code. SB 1215 pushes utilities to build more infrastructure and simplify permits. The state also reportedly announced over $56 million in funding for EV chargers, offering up to $8,500 per charging port for qualifying projects. California has also committed to significant state investments, including billions in charging infrastructure statewide, signaling that public funding will play a growing role in closing the affordability gap.

Still, advocates say the equity gap in EV access at multi-family housing remains a serious and unsolved problem. California’s broader electrification goals, including AB 39, specifically prioritize ensuring disadvantaged communities and renters have access to clean power and EV charging infrastructure. Industry experts warn that a significant portion of installed EV charge stations may be inoperative at any given time, adding significant ongoing repair and management costs to already financially strained affordable housing projects.

✅ Claims in this article were verified using AI-assisted fact-checking.