Read part 1 of our investigation into NRHA's contracting here.
When the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority hired Nathan Simms in 2023, it got an executive director with a history of short stints in top jobs at authorities up and down the East Coast.
For several of Simms’ former colleagues at housing authorities in Maryland and Georgia, and their small orbit of associates, his hiring proved to be a six-figure windfall.
Almost immediately after his November 2023 start, Simms began installing past coworkers as top-level executives at NRHA, including some who never appeared in Norfolk offices, and doling out more than a million dollars in no-bid contracts to others from his previous posts.
Using online records, resumes, LinkedIn pages, meeting minutes and other documents, WHRO uncovered a web of connections between half a dozen ex-NRHA officials hired by Simms and at least four different contractors who were paid by NRHA without undergoing the usual public bidding process.
While Simms authorized several of the no-bid contracts, he also hired former colleagues who oversaw them, extended them and issued more of them.
A former NRHA procurement head said the contracts - issued without approval of NRHA’s board of commissioners and in violation of state law and authority policies - often appeared to duplicate work the authority already did or was doing.
The executives and contractors hired during Simms’ tenure range from former finance and compliance officials to a maintenance company in Georgia with personal ties to one of Simms’ top deputies.
Simms was fired from his NRHA post a few weeks after board members began digging into some of those contracts.
One board member said the pattern of closed-door or no-bid contracting was enabled by several of the people Simms hired to fill the upper ranks of NRHA.
A spreadsheet obtained through a public records request revealed NRHA authorized at least 30 no-bid contracts during Simms’ tenure, worth more than $4.3 million.
The scope of the no-bid contracts and their total cost is not clear. NRHA has begun an investigation and commissioned an audit.
“A proven contractor was pre-selected”
Seven months after beginning work, Simms hired Demetria Walker Johnson at an annual salary of $212,950 as NRHA’s chief operating officer - effectively his right hand. Simms appears to have been her boss at Atlanta Housing, where he worked for four months as senior director of real estate development and interim vice president for real estate investment, finance and development.
Johnson took a series of higher-level jobs in Atlanta Housing’s real estate development and finance departments after Simms left in July 2018. She spent more than 28 years at the agency before coming to Norfolk in June 2024.
In early 2025, Simms directed the hiring of Atlanta-based Trifecta Development Group to handle prepping vacant apartment units in Norfolk for the next tenant for up to $250,000 annually.
The hire was made using a non-competitive sole-source contract. The paperwork obtained by WHRO called it an emergency.“No additional market research was conducted to determine potential sources because/or: a proven contractor was pre-selected to perform the services needed,” reads the justification document, a common refrain on several similar no-bid contracts executed by NRHA from 2023 through 2025.
The paperwork doesn’t say that the owner of Trifecta, Anthonio Thrower, ran a financial business with Johnson until she started work for NRHA.
Johnson is listed as the chief financial officer and secretary of Monroe & Thrower Financial in Georgia business records, a company Thrower co-founded in 2022. One of the listed business addresses for Monroe & Thrower is a home in an Atlanta suburb that property records show is owned by “Demetria W Johnson.”
It’s unclear what kind of work Monroe & Thrower did. Johnson filed for its dissolution in June 2024, two weeks before she started at NRHA.
Five months after Monroe & Thrower was shuttered, Thrower submitted a proposal for his Atlanta-based company to provide turnover services on NRHA’s vacant units. Trifecta did not have a Virginia business license when NRHA hired the company.
Simms approved the sole-source contract on the basis that “NRHA is experiencing a lack of maintenance resources which is causing vacant units to not be ready for lease-up in a timely manner.” Experts told WHRO these kinds of emergency no-bid contracts are meant for cases where lives are in danger or major property damage is imminent.
NRHA didn’t make any effort to find a local company to provide the same services, according to the procurement paperwork.
The paperwork also promised to release a public request for qualified contractors within a month. That didn’t happen until more than a year later, after Trifecta’s contract was canceled by NRHA once the sole-source contract issues had come to light and Johnson was already gone.
NRHA ultimately paid Trifecta about $147,000 under the original 1-year contract and an extension, according to records from the authority, although it’s not clear if that figure is complete.
Reached by phone, Thrower declined to discuss the Norfolk contract or how he got it.
Simms and Johnson could not be reached for comment.
Former colleagues get big contracts
WHRO identified at least three other no-bid contracts issued to consultants with direct personal ties to Simms and his cohorts from previous housing authority jobs.
Simms hired three former employees from Prince George’s County in Maryland to replace long-time NRHA executives. He departed the Maryland agency after less than two years.
Edward Davis arrived at NRHA with an annual salary of $172,432 in July 2024, marking the third time that Simms hired him at different agencies. He previously worked for Simms at the Prince George’s County housing authority in 2022, where Davis would spend two years as the compliance officer. Several jobs before that, Simms was the deputy director of Washington, D.C.’s Department of Housing and Community Development for 16 months, where he hired Davis in 2014.
Brian White, who worked under both Simms and Davis in the Prince George’s authority’s compliance office, according to minutes from that agency’s board meetings, took over as NRHA’s director of federal programs in August 2024. His salary was $143,707.
Keira Brown was hired as the vice president of policy and performance management at NRHA in July 2024. She was a clinical social worker and therapist who previously worked as a housing policy analyst at the Prince George’s County’s authority for two months in 2022 under Simms, according to a resume website found online. Her salary was $143,707.
White, Davis, and Brown were terminated on Jan. 8. Johnson departed on Feb. 1, according to an NRHA spokesperson.
Prince George’s alums weren’t just getting high-level jobs under Simms. At least two others also got hefty contracts as outside consultants. Neither have public websites listing services or clients.
Within a month of taking over the top job in Norfolk, Simms hired Be Noble Consulting for “procurement consulting services” that he attested were an emergency.
“At this time, the state of the agency and the public exigency for the Procurement Consulting requirement will not permit a delay resulting from publicizing a competitive solicitation,” reads the paperwork Simms signed justifying the sole-source contract.
Be Noble is a Texas company owned by Kelvin Jay Noble, who was a procurement officer at Prince George’s County’s housing authority from at least March 2023 until April 2024. He worked under Davis and alongside White.
The one-year emergency NRHA contract was worth up to $72,000. It was extended at an increased hourly rate for two more years, though it was terminated by NRHA after Simms was ousted.
Simms didn’t list that contract when NRHA commissioners requested a list of no-bid contracts in late 2025.
Neither Noble’s contract nor many others were ever bid out publicly and the extensions exceeding federal limits don’t appear to have been justified, according to documents provided to WHRO.
Noble could not be reached for comment.
Another Prince George’s alumnus got NRHA’s most vaguely defined sole-source contract in June 2024.
NRHA hired Vivian Advisory to “serve as an advisor to the executive director, senior staff” and others to provide “independent research and analysis of complex issues regarding housing programs and policies, federal and local regulations and other matters pertaining to affordable housing.”
Vivian Advisory, a Pennsylvania company, is run by Karanja Slaughter, whom Simms hired as chief real estate officer at the Housing Authority of Prince George’s County in November 2021. Slaughter appears in the Prince George’s housing authority board’s minutes as a housing authority division manager as recently as March 2024.
The initial one-year contract with Vivian Advisory in Norfolk was worth as much as $132,000. That contract was extended, just like Nobles’, for another two years. If it hadn’t also been cancelled, the contract would have been worth nearly $400,000 over 3 years.
Slaughter responded to an email request for an interview saying that single-source contracts were “an essential procurement tool” and adding that he provided the services outlined in his contract. He did not reply to follow-up questions via email and phone.
Out-of-town contracts begin to prompt questions
The Vivian contract raised a red flag for NRHA board members. Filed without the required sole-source justification paperwork, Finance Committee members ordered the contract halted two weeks before firing Simms, according to an email obtained through a public records request.
Fraley, a finance committee member who has since become the chairman of NRHA’s board, pointed to the top-level staffers hired by Simms as a key part of the problem the agency is now trying to unwind.
“A lot of the people who were brought in to oversee those procurement guidelines were what appears to be friends of the previous (executive director) and several were working remotely,” Fraley said.
Fraley and Philip Smith, members of the authority’s Finance Committee, began questioning the contracts last autumn. Simms responded with a spreadsheet listing single-source contracts, but did not supply all the information requested by the committee.
The committee requested a record of all sole-source contracts awarded from fiscal year 2022 through 2026, an immediate moratorium on new sole-source contracts, and a hold on two contracts for up to $132,000 each awarded to Vivian Advisory. They also wanted a review and update of NRHA's procurement policy. Simms replied that some items were missing justifications from electronic files, and they were re-created retroactively.
WHRO reviewed other contracts with Atlanta-based companies that raised questions for a lack of justification and their ties to NRHA brass.
In June 2024, Sarah Hilton’s TAV Consulting received a $119,600 contract. It’s not clear how much was paid on that contract,but in fiscal years 2025 and 2026, NRHA awarded TAV contracts of up to $120,600 each year.
According to a spreadsheet shared with the Finance Committee, NHRA paid $151,922 in 2025 and $69,778 in 2026 as of late last year.
Hilton was a senior vice president at Atlanta Housing until at least early 2024, where she would have worked alongside Demetria Johnson. It’s unclear if Hilton and Simms were there at the same time.
Hilton made an appearance at a March 2025 St. Paul’s Advisory Committee meeting, according to minutes from the meeting. She told the committee her firm was working to provide a “holistic approach to service continuum” during the transformation of Calvert Square and Young Terrace. That included working with the United Way to provide a variety of services to youth, adults, and seniors. The minutes said Hilton would report on those efforts.
It’s unclear why providing resident services consulting was an emergency requiring a no-bid contract covering three years. NRHA told WHRO it doesn’t have any sole-source justification documentation for TAV’s contract. The United Way and NRHA’s own People First contractors, provide resident services to those in the St. Paul’s communities.
When reached by email, Hilton did not respond to questions about her contract, how she got it or her relationships with former NRHA staff. She directed WHRO to ask NRHA.
Citing the ongoing internal investigation, NRHA’s interim executive director, Michael Clark, declined an interview with WHRO.
