Depending on your point of view, this Government’s promise to “end rough sleeping by 2027” may either be an insultingly insincere soundbite, or a commendably ambitious promise.

As always, Ministers responsible for putting their names to this pledge (including halving the current amount of rough sleepers during this Parliament) will not be in post to be judged on their success. But the proposals deserve at least consideration, given the scale of the problem.

The £100m plan centres around mental health care and support for rough sleepers. Although tackling the acute end of the poverty scale, the plan shares something with the new Green Paper on social housing however, in that it swerves in-depth discussion of built solutions to the problem.

While Secretary of State for Housing James Brokenshire’s rough sleeping plan includes £50m for homes outside London for homeless people moving on from hostels, Labour has attacked it for containing “no new money.” The bigger picture is that rough sleeping is only the most visible symptom of a massive problem, with councils currently looking after over 79,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation.

The new Green Paper, developed in the wake of Grenfell, proposes a ‘new deal’ on social housing, but focuses on “rebalancing the relationship between tenants and landlords,” including bringing in a new regulator. However it’s not just about existing tenants – one of the Housing Department’s five key bullets describes “building the social homes that we need and ensuring those homes can act as a springboard to home ownership.”

Just how those new homes will be that “springboard” in themselves is hard to see, but the document introduces a new arrangement where tenants can purchase a chunk of their rental property (as ‘low’ as 1 per cent). Where levering the essential volume construction of homes that our poorest people can afford fits in to all this is a mystery. New moves in the Paper to give councils more borrowing flexibility from Right to Buy receipts don’t seem to be the missing link, welcome though they are.

The influential Mark Farmer of developer Cast weighed in quickly with concerns about the lack of anything concrete on building:

“Tackling the housing crisis head-on needs much more focus on delivering affordable homes in appropriate locations with appropriate social and physical infrastructure that can generate sustainable communities.”

He added:

This can only be achieved by bringing forward more public land for development and diversifying our housing market both in terms of tenure offering and methods of production. There is a unique opportunity to use innovative homebuilding techniques.”

Given all the background noise on the need to build genuinely affordable homes, we can only assume the omission of a strong housebuilding focus from the Green Paper is deliberate. If so, it’s a startlingly timid move.