OAKLAND — The city’s director of its housing and community development department is leaving her position, a city spokesman said Monday.

Michele Byrd is leaving after serving after eight years as the head of the department.

“We are so appreciative of Michele Byrd’s service to Oakland and her dedication to housing issues,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf spokesman Justin Berton said in a statement.

“Housing security is one of the highest and most urgent priorities for Oakland and our entire region.”

He would not comment further about Byrd’s departure, saying it is “a personnel matter.”

Byrd, a former special projects manager for the city and San Francisco County, served as the housing department’s deputy director before becoming the director in February 2012.

Berton said that Maraskeshia Smith, an Oakland assistant city administrator, will handle “day-to-day oversight” for the department beginning May 3. Smith, a former director for Cincinnati’s department of public services, began working for the city last July.

Byrd served during some of the city’s bigger housing moves, including its June 2017 vote to spend some Measure KK funds to acquire residential hotels and other properties to house some of its homeless. This was followed months later by the acquisition of East Oakland’s E.C. Reems Gardens Apartments and last year’s acquisition and opening of a 70-unit West Oakland hotel.

Byrd’s departure renewed attention to an NBC Bay Area investigative report last month that questioned the department’s enforcement efforts against landlords over wrongful evictions.

Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.