The Seoul city government said on the 23rd it will expand the "Moa Center," which plays a public management role like an apartment management office by conducting patrols, facility inspections, and small repairs in alleys of low-rise apartments and single-family houses, from the current 13 locations to 28.
The Moa Center is a facility in low-rise residential areas densely packed with single-family, multi-household, and multi-family dwellings that directly provides, as a public service, management functions equivalent to those of an apartment management office. The Seoul city government introduced the Moa Center in 2023 to narrow management gaps stemming from different housing types.
Currently, Moa Centers in six districts (13 locations) manage 2.7 square kilometers of low-rise residential areas, an area equivalent to 380 soccer fields. Last year, each center provided an annual average of 1,715 close-to-daily-life services and conducted 620 regular and ad hoc patrols.
They also carried out inspections of aging facilities, crackdowns on illegal dumping of trash, small repairs such as light bulbs and faucets, and pre-inspections of areas at risk of fire and flooding.
In particular, reflecting the characteristics of low-rise residential areas with many older adults and single-person households, they operate a protection system for vulnerable groups that combines welfare checks with reviews of daily inconveniences, and immediately link issues that are difficult to resolve on their own to relevant agencies such as community centers, police, and fire authorities. A user satisfaction survey of Moa Centers conducted from July to December last year recorded an overall satisfaction rate of 99%.
Reflecting this strong resident demand, the Seoul city government will introduce a "small-scale tailored model" this year with a system that can respond immediately even in outer alleys and micro living zones. New Moa Centers will use idle public spaces to lower installation costs and increase mobility, raising on-site accessibility as a "ultra-close living management system" that fills unit-level management gaps in low-rise residential areas that the existing hub model could not sufficiently reach.
Meanwhile, to strengthen the public nature and expertise of managing low-rise residential areas, the Seoul city government will upgrade the operating system of Moa Centers by improving the selection criteria for "village managers," who work at the centers, and overhauling the performance management system.
Choi Jin-seok, head of the dwellings bureau at the Seoul city government, emphasized, "We will continue to expand the policy of managing low-rise residential areas so that any resident can be guaranteed basic life safety and housing services."