At a meeting on Nov. 6, with no public notice or discussion ahead of the vote, the Board of Commissioners of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority voted to terminate its executive director.
No reason was given during the vote, which happened after the commission retreated into a closed session to discuss an unspecified personnel issue, according to a recording of the meeting that was posted almost two weeks later.
Nathan Simms, who had short stints at several municipal housing authorities before starting in Norfolk two years ago, was present and gave a brief presentation during the Nov. 6 meeting. But neither Simms nor any members of the public appeared to be present at the meeting after the board reconvened to vote on Simms’ termination following the closed session.
As of Tuesday, Simms was still listed as the NRHA’s executive director. Leha Byrd, the authority’s director of communications and intergovernmental relations, refused to confirm whether Simms was still employed at NRHA when reached by WHRO on Monday.
Byrd said only that Simms’ employment “is a matter of public record” and said any further comments would be made via an official statement from the housing authority.
In the nearly two weeks since the board voted to terminate Simms, the housing authority hasn’t made any official statements about his employment.
Efforts to reach Simms were unsuccessful. As of Nov. 17, Simms’ LinkedIn profile shows his employment with NRHA ended this month. He spent the last two years overseeing the ongoing redevelopment of Tidewater Gardens and preparing the upcoming redevelopment of Calvert Square, as well as managing the whole slate of NRHA's properties and programs.
According to his profile, Simms has worked in government housing since 2000 up and down the East Coast.
He spent 11 years at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before diving into municipal housing.
Simms spent nearly four years at the Department of Housing and Community Development in Washington D.C., from 2011 to 2015, before returning to HUD for less than two years.He then did four months as a director at the Atlanta Housing Authority, five months at the Daytona Beach Housing Authority and led the housing authority in Prince George’s County in Maryland for less than two years.
Simms took a job back in Atlanta with the government of Fulton County for 11 months before landing in Norfolk in 2023 to lead the city’s housing authority.
