Property company says racist posters at apartments near UC Irvine are fake

Alexandra Samuels | The University of Texas at Austin

UPDATE: Posters that appeared to be created by Toscana Apartments, a complex near the University of California - Irvine, asking African-Americans to keep their noise levels down are reportedly fake, according to management.



"The flyer was not created or posted by Equity Residential," said Marty McKenna, an Equity Residential public relations representative, via email.

Equity Residential, which owns Toscana Apartments, announced on Facebook it is investigating the origin of the flyer. McKenna told Gawker that the company does not post flyers about noise complaints, preferring instead to contact residents directly via email.

"We are outraged by the content and are investigating the source,” McKenna said.

USA TODAY College will continue to follow this story and update it as it develops.

An Instagram post by user teyent_theequeenb posted a photo where her apartment complex near the University of California, Irvine reportedly reminded African-American residents to “keep conversation volume down and reduce music levels.”

She posted another picture and a video to Instagram saying she found two of these signs in different elevators in her building.

“Call me crazy, but (there’s) only about eight people or less I’ve seen that are black in my building so what’s really the issue?” she commented under her photo.

Under one of the photos, UCIrvine posted that “Toscana apartments are not affiliated with UC Irvine and we do not condone the message in the flyer. The University is also addressing this issue with the apartment management and the City of Irvine.”

"If they're not affiliated, how can they address the issue?" the Instagram user replied.



Alex Samuels is a University of Texas at Austin student and USA TODAY College breaking news correspondent.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.