A resident of an Irvine apartment complex said she found a flyer in her building's elevator asking the tenants to keep it down at night—but especially black people. The management company is insistent that the flyer is a fake.A woman posted video and images to social media of a flyer hanging in an elevator at the Toscana Apartments in Irvine. The flyer was, at first, just a "friendly reminder" for residents to turn down their TVs and stereos at night, as management had been receiving numerous complaints about noise after 10 p.m. The flyer then went on to target a particular group of residents, Jezebel reports.
ICYMI: Toscana Management in Irvine, CA has noise guidelines specifically for their African American residents: pic.twitter.com/B9gMRCKHNS
— Nani 🇬🇭 (@lenubienne) May 29, 2015
Toscana Apartments is managed by Equity Residential, a property management company based in Chicago with apartments available in 12 states. They have vehemently denied posting the flyer, and said they're trying to figure out who did.
@lenubienne Equity did not create or post this flyer. We are outraged by its content and are actively investigating its source.
— Equity Residential (@EquityRes) May 29, 2015
Equity spokesman Marty McKenna told Gawker that the flyer is a fake. "It wasn't produced by us. It wasn't posted by us. I don't know where it came from," he said.
McKenna said that the company doesn't even post flyers like this, but instead prefers to communicate with its tenants via email.
Irvine hasn't had the best track record in the past few years when it comes to racism. In 2013, a black freshman at UC Irvine said she found a note slipped under her door that read "Go back 2 Africa slave." That same year, a UC Irvine frat sparked outrage when a member put on blackface for a "Suit & Tie" parody video. In 2011, an employee at an Irvine Chick-fil-A decided that instead of asking two Asian customers their names, she'd just put "Ching" and "Chong" on their receipts.
