In August, exactly a month after pledging to end long-term rough sleeping as his first instruction as prime minister, Andy Burnham put a date on the first test. By Christmas – just over 18 weeks away – everyone sleeping rough should be offered a route off the streets.

The government has backed the effort with £442m over three years, including £178m of capital to create settled homes for people who have spent the longest on the streets.

The latest figures released in August give a sense of what that promise involves. In June, an estimated 8,748 people were recorded sleeping rough in England, of whom 3,253 were sleeping rough long term – the highest number recorded for this time of year.

Much now turns on what counts as an offer. The new Rough Sleeping Programme guidance gives local areas flexibility, requires accommodation to be safe and suitable, and expects clear routes to settled housing. But there is considerable distance between getting someone indoors and ending their homelessness.

For people who have already spent long periods sleeping rough, the first question should be: what have we tried already? Local teams should know what accommodation and support have been offered previously, what was accepted or declined and why, where placements broke down, and whether a suitable settled home with the necessary support has ever actually been available.

Too often, that history is scattered across services. For a group defined by the persistence of their rough sleeping, making another offer without understanding the previous ones risks repeating this cycle.

Also, those 3,253 people are not a homogeneous group. What they share is the persistence of their rough sleeping, not the kind of home or support they need to leave it behind. Some will need much more support than others, but that does not mean they need a longer journey through homelessness services before reaching a home.

So the Christmas offer should mean more than a bed or a referral. For someone sleeping rough long term, it should be based on what has happened before and provide a realistic route to a safe, suitable and settled home, with the support needed to reach it and sustain it. Somewhere safe tonight may be essential, but emergency accommodation should not itself be confused with resolving someone’s homelessness. If an offer is declined, understanding why should inform what happens next rather than allow the case to be counted as complete.

By Christmas, local areas therefore need to know each person’s history and have made an offer that can realistically work for them. Where a settled home cannot immediately be secured, the route to one should be specific rather than left as a problem for later.

At the same time, mayoral strategic authorities should be looking across those individual cases for problems that councils cannot readily solve alone: shortages of particular kinds of housing or support, people unable to move across administrative boundaries, or existing provision being used simply because there is nowhere more appropriate to go. Their role is not to manage individual cases, but to bring councils, housing providers and other services together around problems that make more sense at the scale of a wider housing market.

Whitehall needs to look further upstream. A national commitment to end rough sleeping will struggle if immigration or eligibility rules leave some people without a viable housing route, or if decisions elsewhere in government continue to push people towards the street. Its job is to make sure national policy does not frustrate what local areas and mayors are being asked to achieve, while defining clearly what counts as an offer and following public money through to the housing outcomes it produces.

These distinctions matter because deadlines change behaviour. If success at Christmas is measured principally by how many people have been brought indoors, the quickest response may be to offer more of the emergency and hostel accommodation the system already knows how to provide. Government guidance recognises that there is no one-size-fits-all response and that where support is refused, what was offered and whether it was appropriate matter.

There are reasons to look hard at the existing mix. At the Centre for Homelessness Impact, we conducted the largest survey of UK hostels. It found that stays of one to two years were most common and stays of two to five years were common, despite hostels being intended to be temporary provision; the average annual cost was £27,785 per bed.

Hostels have a role, but provision intended to be temporary should not become the default long-term response. For people who have already spent years sleeping rough, the balance should shift towards settled homes with support.

The £178m capital programme presents an opportunity to act on what the Christmas mobilisation reveals.

Rather than simply adding to the existing mix, the programme can acquire homes, bring empty properties back into use and convert buildings. Local areas should know what individual people need; mayoral authorities can see what those needs add up to across a wider housing market. That evidence should shape what is bought or converted, where and with what support – including whether parts of the existing hostel estate could become permanent or longer-term homes.

There is precedent for thinking this way. Finland’s move towards Housing First included converting shelters and hostels into permanent homes, changing the physical infrastructure of its homelessness response rather than simply adding to it. The model cannot simply be imported, but with our support, local authorities such as Liverpool are exploring whether a similar conversion programme could work there, what it might involve and where to start.

The principle is relevant nationally: capital can change the balance between managing homelessness and providing homes.

But changing the housing offer is only worthwhile if it lasts. Of the 1,208 people returning to rough sleeping in June, 321 had moved into settled accommodation during the previous 12 months; in every month so far this year, between 26% and 31% of those returning had previously reached settled accommodation.

The latest data cannot tell us why they returned, but it shows why success cannot stop at an offer, a night indoors or even a move into a home. It has to include whether that home lasts and whether, over time, people can rebuild the relationships, purpose and opportunities – including routes into employment – that make a life beyond homelessness possible.

Mr Burnham has brought welcome urgency to a problem that has resisted it for too long. Used well, the Christmas mobilisation can do more than bring people indoors for winter: it can show what each person needs, expose the obstacles that keep getting in the way and direct the investment that follows towards the homes and support that can end their homelessness.

That would make Christmas not only the target, but the start of a more ambitious shift – organising England’s response around the destination: a settled home and a life beyond homelessness that can last.

Lígia Teixeira is Chief Executive of Centre for Homelessness Impact

This article was first published in Inside Housing.

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