During an outage any properly installed solar will disconnect from the grid. Utility power must be restored and stabilized for about 5 minutes before it will reconnect. I strongly believe the neighbor has an unauthorized system, no utility permit to generate and no city inspection. Very dangerous.
Same situation applies for any generated power. No backfeed is permitted. Must have a transfer switch and I recommend a city inspection.
There most certainly are solar/battery interconnect systems that will continue to operate your home during a power outage.
And if for some political reason the local utility or city does not allow even a proper system then you are out of luck on the home... focus on the RV to be usable off grid. Even if the solar does not fully provide a solution it will certainly extend the available gasoline.