Nearly two years after fumbling more than $10 million in federal homeless services funds, officials have approved Baltimore’s request to recoup much of the lost money.

Mayor Brandon Scott told reporters last week that officials with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development informed City Hall that it had approved the request to get reimbursed for more than $6 million in grant funds the city received in the 2020 fiscal year — money the city had forfeited after blowing a deadline to send in the reimbursement forms.

The city appealed to the federal housing agency earlier this year to get back part of that lost funding.

The Baltimore Banner reported last year that city officials, banking on getting reimbursed later, paid partners who help house some of Baltimore’s most vulnerable residents with city money instead of the designated federal grants.

As The Banner revealed last year, the city couldn’t maintain its access to HUD’s electronic grants management system — sometimes because city staff had violated HUD security rules and was locked out of the system and other times because staff members with the credentials had left for other jobs. The implications were dire: HUD, which funds millions of dollars’ worth of homelessness eradication projects in Baltimore every year, considers how well grant recipients comply with funding rules before awarding more in subsequent years.

HUD officials would not initially say whether the agency would allow for the city to reclaim any of the lost funds. Scott personally wrote to then-HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge asking the agency to reconsider and pledging to institute compliance reforms to prevent similar issues in the future.

After a review of Baltimore’s documentation, the city and the federal government determined that “the appropriate reimbursement amount” was over $6 million, a HUD spokesperson said Thursday. The mayor’s office has characterized the $6 million as the “full” amount that was lost.

Former Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services Director Irene Agustin later defended the agency’s performance last year before the City Council. Later last fall, though, Agustin resigned, as the botched federal funds compounded other crises in the homeless services office, including late payments to its partners.

Ernestina Simmons was named Agustin’s replacement on the same day the city announced her resignation last fall.

Scott framed HUD’s reimbursement as a chance to “correct the record” on the lost millions, noting that no providers in Baltimore lost out on funding as a result of the incident.

“The city fronted the money and immediately got to work with HUD to address the issue,” the mayor said, thanking HUD leadership for working with the city to address the problem.