It’s back on the market. A listing on Zillow, the apartment rental website, shows the owner is asking $3,150 a month for the apartment at 1234 N. Laurel Ave. where Ed Buck is alleged to have run a drug den and where two African-American men were found dead of methamphetamine overdoses.
Those deaths sparked a number of protests outside the Laurel Avenue apartment building that attracted Los Angeles television crews and reporters from publications such as the Los Angeles Times and the U.K.’s Daily Mail. Buck, a gay white man in his 60s, was often inside his apartment (unit No. 17) during the demonstrations and covered his second-floor windows with bedsheets while they took place.
The methamphetamine-related deaths and Buck’s history of making donations to the election campaigns of several West Hollywood City Council members and prominent county and state Democratic Party candidates drew attention from media around the world.
The two-bedroom, two-bath apartment has been empty since Sept. 17, 2019, when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Buck on charges of operating a drug house and giving methamphetamine to a 37-year-old man who overdosed at his apartment but survived and reported Buck to the Sheriff’s Department. Buck was subsequently charged by federal prosecutors with providing methamphetamine that caused the overdose death in his apartment of Gemmel Moore, 26, an African-American sex worker, on July 2017, and the meth-related death in his apartment in January 2019 of 55-year-old Timothy Dean, another African-American man. Buck frequently solicited sex from young black men on gay sex hookup sites like Adam4Adam.
Buck currently is in prison, awaiting trial in federal court on charges related to those deaths.
In December 2019, a state Superior Court judge granted a petition requesting that Buck be evicted that was filed by David Shane Enterprises Inc., owner of the 22-unit apartment building. Since then Shane Enterprises is said to have done a thorough cleaning of the apartment whose interior has been shown in several photos taken during apparent sex and drug encounters between Buck and sex workers.
The Zilllow listing says the apartment contains 1,000 square feet. California law says the landlord must disclose to potential renters the fact that there have been deaths in the apartment within the past three years. The landlord also must disclose methamphetamine contamination in the drug was manufactured there. However, it is not clear whether or not Ed Buck manufactured methamphetamine within the apartment or acquired it elsewhere.
What a dump. How did that guy have a penny to his name??
I live very close by. I have a one-bedroom almost as large as that two bedroom.
The rent is ridiculously high.
I agree with everybody below, when it comes to the rental cost.
Criminal, indeed.
This rent is criminal!
Why is the skin color of everyone involved mentioned? Who cares if he likes black guys?
Buck had been living there for several decades right? I bet he was paying less than 1500/month
He got that unit in 1993 for $640/month. Was very low then due to the previous tenant had been there for 20+ years. And when WeHo had exit rent control (could raise a max of 10% from the previous rental rate if you changed the drapes, carpet and painted).
Too pricey for the neighborhood, even if it wasn’t Ed Buck’s old place and even if we weren’t at 20% unemployment because of the coronavirus pandemic
It might be different if that building weren’t stucco and styrofoam. My guess is they’ll NEVER get that price.
I would not have a problem living there. I tried to buy the house in the BH flats on Elm street where the Menendez brothers killed their parents, but someone else got it. I like places with histories and hopefully ghosts, but I agree with Michael Grace (whom I think disagrees with most everything I say). The good old days are over. But the future is bright and I look forward to the renaissance and I welcome the changes. We must keep a positive outlook, things will get better. We might be in the middle of making major history. We… Read more »
I would like to add that I feel very sorry for those who suffered and/or died in that apartment. I truly hope that they have found eternal peace and know that they were victims and it was not their fault. Addictions are a disease, unfortunately there are predators out their who will exploit people’s disease as Ed Buck did.
If those walls could talk..
if those walls could SCREAM
True
They are asking $3000 plus! They are delusional or have had their heads in the sand for the last two months. Owners and developers and their streetwalkers, the political hack, are in for a rude awakening. West Hollywood’s la de da days are over.
The only way it could be less attractive a property if it were Ed Gein’s