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Before I run the risk of sounding ungrateful, let me quickly add that the government's commitment to eliminating, effectively, dependence on bed and breakfast hotels to accommodate homeless families is a triumph in both principle and practice. With rare exceptions – and a degree of flexibility should always be built into the toughest of targets – it was completely right to strive for a limit of six weeks in terms of the placement of families in B&Bs. They were a vision of hell that blighted the lives of children who had to grow up in them – and still are hell, of course, for many vulnerable single people, but that's another story.

So, credit where credit's due. The target looks set to be achieved, money backed the commitment and many imaginative ideas have been applied to finding a solution. But it is time to look at what happens next.

Homelessness and housing need remain as serious as ever, even if one of their most visible manifestations will soon be gone. The next challenge for what is optimistically described as "temporary housing" is how to make this as decent an experience as possible for the tens of thousands of people who continue to experience it. While the living conditions are, for the most part, far better than any B&B hostel, there are still disadvantages, such as insecurity and high rents.

It is time to bow to the inevitability of permanent accommodation as a feature of the housing landscape: to stop thinking in the short to medium term and work out a package that meets the needs of the sector and the tenants. Three-year leasing deals don't seem to make financial sense or offer the best deal for residents, almost all of whom are vulnerable.

Three-year leasing deals don’t seem to make financial sense or offer the best deal for vulnerable residents

Properties need to be bought or built to accommodate the flow of people through temporary housing, with long (10-year) agreements between RSLs and local authorities built in. This would offer residents something closer to a permanent home but would also cut overheads.Potentially, the downside of this is that the property market may collapse – but on the plus side, we are pumping money into landlords' hands for short-term lets. And why shouldn't registered social landlords and other partners take a risk on the longer term, sharing any equity gain (likely over a 10-year period), even selling a proportion of the homes at the end of the lease to offset costs or aid development? At the moment, the deal seems to favour private landlords all the way.

One outcome everyone should agree on is the need to keep rents for temporary accommodation at sub-market levels to allow as many people as possible to get back to work. At present, weekly rents of £250 or more (sometimes for right-to-buy flats, where the public sector rent would have been £70-100), deter all but the most zealous from trying out the labour market and the vagaries of housing benefit as a "work incentive".

As numbers climb, the need to tackle either rents or a simplified New Deal style benefits package becomes more urgent.