The fired executive director of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority steered government contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece to former colleagues and business associates, a WHRO investigation revealed.
Simms awarded those no-bid contracts — often for consulting that one former employee said were unnecessary and duplicated previous work — without the typical public solicitation that nearly all government contracts go through and without the NRHA board’s knowledge.
Instead, Simms pushed NRHA staff to violate state law, U.S. Housing and Urban Development policies and the authority’s own procurement rules by issuing non-competitive contracts the agency’s own policies say are only permitted in emergency situations where life, limb or property are at immediate risk.
NRHA issued at least $4.3 million in no-bid contracts during Simms’ two-year stint leading the authority. Some went to former colleagues or associates of his or his top deputies, according to documents obtained through a records request. None of the contracts were presented to the NRHA board of commissioners, as required by the authority’s policies.
NRHA’s board quietly fired Simms in November by a 6-3 vote. Members on the authority’s Finance Committee said they were kept in the dark about the no-bid contracts and realized the depth of the problem after Simms didn’t fully answer their requests for information last fall.
The authority has launched an investigation into Simms’ tenure and hired an auditor to review procurement practices. The full extent of financial misconduct at NRHA, the state’s largest housing authority with an annual budget of more than $156 million, is still unclear.
Michael Clark, whom the board brought out of retirement to lead NRHA after Simms’ firing, declined an interview with WHRO. But he acknowledged the investigation is examining possible crimes.
“We are currently reviewing all sole source contracts and terminating those where there may be improprieties,” Clark said in an email. “If the improprieties prove illegal, we will initiate the appropriate actions. Given that the review is ongoing and may result in legal actions, I cannot provide additional comments at this time.”
Procurement experts said personal links between high-level NRHA staff and contractors that received noncompetitive contracts combined with repeated violations of the law raise red flags about the officials’ conduct and the lack of oversight to prevent it.
After Clark’s arrival, the authority announced the departure of at least five top-level executives hired in the last two years. They worked with Simms at previous posts and he installed them in top positions at NRHA.
Those executives include Kiaira Brown, vice president of policy and performance management; Brian White, the federal programs director; Edward Davis, the chief compliance officer; Demetria Johnson, the chief operating officer; and Debra Stephens, the chief housing and real estate officer.
Brown, White and Davis worked with Simms in Prince George’s County, Md. Johnson and Stephens worked at Atlanta Housing, where Simms briefly served as a senior director and vice president for about four months.
Several contracts issued behind closed doors went to people connected to those NRHA executives through those two housing authorities or through private business dealings.
WHRO could not reach Simms or the former NRHA officials for comment.
“They were written to pass”
Kathy Mosley and other NRHA staffers were excited by Nathan Simms when he arrived to lead the authority in November 2023.
“(He) seemed to be a breath of fresh air,” she said.
Mosley was a long-time NRHA employee who served in different departments under several executive directors. By the time Simms arrived, she had worked her way up to be the director of the authority’s procurement department, which oversees purchasing and contracts.
Almost immediately after starting, Simms began asking Mosley to put together contracts for consultants.
This struck Mosley as odd. NRHA just had a consultant recommend changes across the agency in 2021, so more consultants for specific areas seemed redundant.
A request like this directly from the executive director was also unusual and the way Simms asked her to do the contracts didn’t make sense either.
He didn’t want Mosley to go through the standard public procurement process used by government agencies. Usually, NRHA would publicly advertise a need for services, accept bids from companies that could do the job, and decide on the best offer, all done in the open and reviewable online.
Instead, Simms directed Mosley to use so-called “sole-source” contracts, a rare method that, as the name suggests, allows an agency to seek just one bidder for a contract. Sole-sourcing requires additional justification as to why the agency needs to circumvent the public bidding process. Most often, that’s because it’s an emergency and there isn’t time to conduct the public process that often takes several months.
“In the event that someone's life is in jeopardy, the property is in jeopardy, something's getting ready to fall down, there's no heat and it's 20 degrees outside,” Mosley explained.
Even though these requests didn’t fit that bill, Mosely wrote justifications claiming an emergency need for consultants to advise NRHA on procurement policies and financial services in December 2023.
“You can make them work. Sole sourcing, like I say all the time, ‘I can bend the rules, but I can't break the rules.’ So sometimes you make the circumstance fit the situation,” Mosley said. “They were written to pass.”
WHRO reviewed five sole-source contracts that had minimal or no justification and appear to have violated local procurement policies and federal requirements. Mosley said there are likely several more, and NRHA documents tallied at least 30 sole-source contracts issued while Simms was in charge.
Mosley said Simms also began getting rid of people at all levels of the agency soon after he started. It quickly became clear that to stay at NRHA under the new director, one had to “play the game.”
“Nobody knew what was going on. Everybody was fearful for their jobs,” Mosley said, including her, which left her feeling pressured into completing contracts she knew weren’t up to par.
Several of the executives Simms hired from previous workplaces remained remote for their entire tenure. NRHA staffers called them “the TV people” because they only saw them in Zoom meetings, according to Mosley.
Earl Fraley, NRHA’s board chair, said the staff Simms’ brought in to oversee procurement were his friends and nearly all were gone within a couple of months of Simms’ firing.
“I think we've cleaned a lot of that up,” Fraley said.
Before that, Mosley said morale within NRHA fell through the floor.
“NRHA turned straight miserable,” Mosley said. “There was a time where the motto was ‘NRHA is a great place to live, work and play.’ Then it was just a place to get away from.”
She went along with requests for several more questionable sole-source contracts in 2024 that came from Simms and other top officials. Those often had vague descriptions of what the contractor would be doing and no explanation for why NRHA needed the services. Filling in those gaps was her job.
So began a parade of consultants “for just about every area of the agency.”
Mosley eventually began asking questions. In one instance, there was talk about buying modular homes from a builder in Pennsylvania. When she raised concerns about the cost to ship the homes and asked about finding a builder closer to Hampton Roads, the idea and contract were dropped.
After pushing back on that and other schemes, Mosley found herself moved from the procurement office into a different department.
She was fired in February 2025, in what her supervisor told her was a reduction-in-force layoff, after nearly 23 years with the agency.
Procurement duties were handed off to one of Simms’ handpicked executives: Brian White, who worked for him at the Prince George’s County housing authority.
By then, NRHA had paid a consultant tens of thousands of dollars, ostensibly to review NRHA’s procurement practices and recommend changes.
That consultant: Kelvin Jay Noble, who worked alongside White at Prince George’s County.
Contracts broke state laws, local and federal rules
The beginning of the end to Simms’ brief tenure in Norfolk began when NRHA commissioners started looking into no-bid contracts last autumn. It’s not clear why, after nearly two years, the board’s finance committee started asking questions.
Bill Kovacic, a procurement law expert at George Washington University Law School, said procurement laws have extensive guardrails “built into the system to make sure that people don't cheat.”
Those procurement laws are written to encourage competition, both to lower prices and to prevent corruption. But the standard public bidding process can take many months.
The law allows for non-competitive contracts in limited circumstances. The most notable reason is when there is an emergency need that won’t allow for a months-long process. Kovacic said an emergency under the law means a serious, imminent threat to people or property.
“Emergency is not a synonym for convenience,” he said.
WHRO reviewed five NRHA contracts, each for annual amounts that could have paid out six figures, that appear to have violated both local and federal policies and state requirements.
Among those violations were:
- State law says any emergency contracts should have extensive documentation detailing their necessity. Some of the sole-source contracts had no justification paperwork at all. Others argued for an emergency need for services without explaining any actual emergency.
- That same law says government agencies must publish a notice that they intend to issue a no-bid contract. Such laws are intended to allow potential competing bidders a chance to raise concerns and ensure these kinds of contracts aren’t abused. There is no evidence NRHA published notices for any sole-source contracts online. NRHA’s website lists open, awarded and cancelled solicitations back to 2020, but doesn’t include any entries under the “Sole Source” category. There are no notices for sole-source contracts on a government contracting portal called Bonfire, where NRHA has posted contracting opportunities since at least 2022, and no entries for the agency’s sole source contracts on the state’s Department of General Services procurement website, where many other NRHA contracts have been listed over the last several years.
Procurement experts said consistently ignoring federal rules should raise red flags — especially combined with personal connections between some of the contractors and NRHA’s top brass.
“It's cronyism and familiarity, which is bad, not just because it diminishes the value that's being obtained for the expenditures, but it corrodes the civic trust,” Kovacic said. “This is what gives sole-source contracting and public procurement a bad name altogether.”
Though the law is clear that noncompetitive contracts are sometimes unavoidable, he said the scope of the no-bid contracts issued by NRHA should prompt more oversight.
“But year after year after year, and for something as hazily described as ‘consulting services,’ ‘procurement consulting.’ Come on, guys. You're either not trying or something else is fundamentally wrong with what's going on here,” Kovacic said when presented with the details of NRHA’s sole-source contracting.
A spreadsheet Simms supplied to board members who questioned him shows 30 sole-source contracts were awarded during his time leading the agency. However, contracts, emails and other documents obtained by WHRO indicate that spreadsheet was incomplete.
"There are circumstances that arise where you need to do this," Fraley said. "I understand that. But that they should be rare and exceptional, and it appeared to be somewhat routine."
Many of those no-bid contracts have been terminated in the wake of Simms’ firing.
NRHA’s internal review isn’t limited just to the noncompetitive contracts.
Under NRHA’s policies, contracts for more than $100,000 must be approved by the board of commissioners. That didn’t happen under Simms’ leadership, NRHA’s legal counsel Delphine Carnes told WHRO. At least 17 sole-source contracts worth six-figures annually have been issued or renewed since 2023, according to NRHA documents.
Smith also noted the review was also looking at Simms’ communications - or lack thereof - with the board during his two-year stint.
Interim Director Clark and board members said changes will prevent future problems, pointing to the creation of a new regulatory compliance department within NRHA and the outside audit.
HUD did not respond to inquiries about whether the agency is investigating what happened at NRHA. Clark said HUD is not investigating.
The firing of Simms in November was not the first time he abruptly departed a housing authority. The Prince George’s County Housing Authority board minutes noted in November 2022, without explanation, that Simms was no longer employed there after less than two years.
In the wake of his departure, the board ordered a forensic audit. County officials told WHRO it’s not complete and can’t be released to the public.
Despite his firing in Norfolk, Simms is now poised to take the helm of another major housing authority.
Last month, the Charleston, South Carolina, housing authority board voted 5-2 to hire Simms. A spokesman told the local paper that Simms was fired in Norfolk because “his tenure concluded as part of a leadership transition following a change in local governance priorities.”
