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Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll seemed to move up the timeline for hiring a new housing secretary Tuesday, telling local officials that the Healey administration is planning to fill the new post “in a quick manner” after it becomes “available” later this month.

“It has been warmly received so far,” the lieutenant governor said of the plan to reorganize the state bureaucracy, which would split the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development into two separate Cabinet offices.

“So we’re hopeful by the end of April we’ll have this particular Cabinet secretary post available. We look to fill it in a quick manner so we can get moving on this work,” Driscoll told the Local Government Advisory Commission.

In mid-February, she had told the same group that state government’s new housing official would come on board “probably … closer to the fiscal year, we hope a little bit before.”

The state legislature has until April 30 to vote on the so-called “reorg” – 60 days after it was filed. The restructuring would take effect on that date anyway if the branches choose not to weigh in, though a co-chair of the legislative committee that reviewed the plan recently said he expected it to hit the Senate floor this Thursday.

The lieutenant governor also touted how rolling “masking tape down the center of the room” at EOHED will allow current Housing and Economic Development Secretary Yvonne Hao to focus solely on economic development matters, from competitiveness among other states to “robustly” supporting emerging industries like clean energy technology.

Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller said while the scope of the new housing post “sounds narrow,” she was struck by the “broad” range of issues that intertwine with housing, like transportation, jobs, and climate sustainability.

Fuller also highlighted a new “middle-income senior affordable housing” project in Newton that she called “first in the nation.”

“It is so cool. With the state’s help, we’re transforming an armory into 100 percent affordable housing, because we could buy it from you guys for $1. That’s what made it happen. … None of this we could do without the support of the state and these relationships,” the mayor said.

“We feel a strong need to accelerate the pace of housing,” Driscoll told the commission as she referenced affordable housing lotteries like a recent one in Worcester, where she said 1,800 people put their names in for 49 available units. She called such scenarios a “heartbreaking situation.”

With high demand for emergency shelters, the state has again turned to sheltering people in places like hotels, and the former Salem mayor also referenced the use of vacant dorms at Salem State University.

She said she “want[ed] to put a finer point” on services that are offered to people in such settings.

“We’re working hard to not just put people in a hotel, but there are services and wraparound and ways that we try to work with the community to ensure that it’s an opportunity, not just something that is problematic, for sure,” Driscoll said.

She urged local officials to be in touch with the administration about possible shelter locations in their communities.

Driscoll told the local government leaders that the administration also envisioned the new housing secretary being in close contact with municipalities about housing creation.

“You know, the Housing Choice legislation has given us a little lens into, how do we support transit-oriented development, how do we work with communities to provide them with technical assistance, thinking about how zoning can be either a tool or a barrier to creating housing. And we’re hopeful that this position and this work within this Cabinet can frankly be in partnership with communities, given just the immense pressure that we have on the housing market everywhere,” she said.