Hi OMG,
It can be done if you really want to. I've been running my residence on solar electric (PV) for nearly 20 years now, and I'm not wealthy by any stretch of imagination - it was just that important to me. I did it one or two panels at a time, building my household PV array incrementally over several years.
I definitely agree with your initial premise; there really should be solar on each and every rooftop here in the desert. Solar is a perfect media for providing decentralized power, and IMO the very idea of big power companies insisting on huge centralized solar power stations with accompanying huge impacts is singularly asinine when millions of acres of suitable rooftop sites exist at the places the power will be used. It's ironic in a way; the power companies have a space age energy solution but they are still constrained by buggy whip thinking in it's implementation and distribution.