A California homeowner has received a shocking anonymous letter saying his ‘interracial family is not welcome’ in their neighborhood.
It’s 2019, but the mentality of some people is still 1959.
Mark Yu, who is of Filipino and Chinese descent, and his Mexican wife Sandy discovered the letter in the mailbox of their home in the Meadowlands area of Vacaville on Wednesday.
Yu, a 43-year-old San Francisco native, moved into the home with his wife and their five children ages two to 12 in November.
‘This isn’t the ghetto,’ the anonymous letter sneers. ‘We may sound harsh, but your interracial family is not welcome here.’
The threatening letter gives the family 60 days to ‘vacate’ and promises to contact their ‘landlord’ and have them evicted otherwise.
Yu posted the letter on Facebook and received an outpouring of support.
Mark Yu and his wife Sandy.
He said that many neighbors have been knocking on his door in order to assure him that they do welcome his family, and to express disgust at the letter.
‘Not everybody is a bad apple. There’s more good people than there are bad people,’ Yu told KTXL-TV.
The family filed a police report, but investigators say that although the letter is contemptible it does not rise to the level of a crime.
Neighbors praise the Yu family’s kindness and say they have opened their home to homeless grandparents and a grandson, along with two women who struggled to find a place to live.
Yu was especially shocked at the letter since in the houses along his block, there are at least seven interracial couples, KTVU-TV reported.
It is not the first letter the family has received. Yu says that shortly after moving in, the family received a less aggressive letter urging them to clean up moving boxes left in their driveway.
He said a city code inspector was called and the family cleaned up the items.
Yu said the prior owner did not maintain the yard and it was mostly weeds, and that he has not had much time to work on improving it due to his job running a mortgage company branch.
He said he looks forward to the anonymous letter writer contacting his ‘landlord’, since he himself owns the home.
‘I’m not going to judge what kind of person this person is, but I’m gonna tell you this, is that what you did was stupid,’ he told the Fox affiliate.