Ford Pulls Back From EV Plans After $19.5 Billion Hit

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Sabrina Siddiqui (0:18)

Ford is writing down a massive $19.5 billion in electric vehicle investments. Plus, what dueling approaches in Minnesota's twin cities tell us about fixing America's housing crisis?

Rebecca Picciotti (0:31)

In St. Paul, you saw that they didn't find that it worked for their city, and they're in fact starting to roll parts of it back. It's not a wholesale rebuke of rent control, but the first attempt didn't necessarily go as planned.

Sabrina Siddiqui (0:46)

And the US offers Ukraine security guarantees as part of peace talks with Russia. It's Monday, December 15th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal, sitting in for Alex Osela. This is the PM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

The son of Hollywood director Rob Reiner and Michelle Singer Reiner has been arrested on suspicion of murder in the desks of his parents. They were found dead yesterday in their Los Angeles home. And this is LAPD Chief Jim McDonald today.

Jim McDonald (1:23)

We have our robbery homicide division handling the investigation. They worked throughout the night on this case and were able to take into custody Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case. He was subsequently booked for murder.

Sabrina Siddiqui (1:40)

Nick Reiner has spoken about his battle with drug addiction over the years and has said he was homeless and in and out of shelters at times. Rob Reiner's credits include Hollywood classics such as This is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride and A Few Good Men. There was an outpouring of grief after news of the couple's deaths from Hollywood celebrities and politicians, including former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Rob Reiner was known for his liberal advocacy and was a Democratic donor. He was also a critic of President Trump, who said today on a post on his social media platform Truth Social that Rob Reiner was tortured and struggling and that he suffered from quote Trump derangement syndrome. Trump's comments drew criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. Also in California, four people have been arrested on charges of plotting New Year's Eve bombings. Law enforcement officials said today that the four were arrested on Friday in the Mojave Desert as they began testing explosive devices. The Justice Department says they were members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front, an anti-government group that the DOJ says has advocated on social media for violence against US officials. The government says one defendant provided an FBI source with plans for planting backpacks loaded with explosives outside five locations targeting two companies and detonating them on New Year's Eve. A Justice Department official described the companies as Amazon-type logistics centers.

Minnesota's Twin Cities have taken starkly different paths to tackle soaring housing costs. St. Paul turned to rent control with one of the country's strictest policies. Minneapolis, meanwhile, steered clear of rent control and instead prioritized boosting the supply of housing with rules in 2020 that made it easier to build apartments. The results are now coming into focus. Rebecca Picciotto, who covers the residential rental market and housing policy at The Wall Street Journal, has the story. Rebecca, let's start with St. Paul. In 2022, St. Paul capped annual rent increases at 3% for most departments. What was the outcome there?

Rebecca Picciotti (3:47)

Development pretty much fell off a cliff. You know, private housing developers, as well as their investors and lenders, don't really like being restricted on how much rent they can charge. Some developers paused their projects. Lenders and investors started pulling back on potential financing. Developers that might have looked at downtown empty office buildings and wanted to convert them to new apartments, they started shelving those plans. And so from January to May 2022, we saw that building permits in St. Paul were 79% lower than the same period the year before.

Sabrina Siddiqui (4:20)

Minneapolis took a different approach, making it easier to build apartments. And one way they did that was removing restrictions that limited housing to single family homes. How has that played out?

Rebecca Picciotti (4:31)

In Minneapolis, during that same January to May 2022 period, building permits were four times as high as the year before. So you saw something of a downtown boom springing up in Minneapolis. There's this one neighborhood called the North Loop, and there's all of this new construction going on, and high-end apartment buildings line the streets, and, you know, cute coffee shops. It became more of a scene that started, you know, attracting young renters at the same time that St. Paul's building was slowing down. It's worth putting an asterisk next to all of this. This was a tumultuous time for commercial real estate broadly, especially in the Twin Cities. You had the pandemic rattling the office market, and there was political unrest like the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis. So this was all kind of weighing on the region. But you saw that development in Minneapolis. But in St. Paul, you saw that they didn't find that it worked for their city, and they're in fact starting to roll parts of it back. It's not a wholesale rebuke of rent control, but the first attempt didn't necessarily go as planned.