Today we’re launching Chenashe — a property management system purpose-built for Australian community housing providers.
Chenashe was born inside an Aboriginal community-controlled housing organisation that needed a system to manage tenancies, rent, maintenance, inspections, compliance, and tenant support — and couldn’t find one that did all of those things without costing more than the organisation could afford or requiring workarounds for everything that makes community housing different from private rental.
So we built it. And now it’s available to every community housing provider in Australia.
What Chenashe does
Chenashe replaces the spreadsheet ledger, the paper inspection pad, the separate compliance registers, the shared inbox, and the quarterly reporting scramble — with one system that covers:
- Rent and money — invoicing, arrears with risk-trend alerts, Centrepay deductions, RTBA bonds, bank feed and reconciliation, Xero sync
- Tenancies and people — tenant and lease records, MARAM screening, income reviews, caseload and support plans, notices, VCAT applications
- Compliance and reporting — VHR KPMs with regulator export, property safety checks, asbestos/hazmat and NDIS SDA registers, full audit log, board pack and funder reports
- Maintenance and assets — work orders with SLA tracking, contractor scheduling, preventive maintenance, asset register
- Inspections — room-by-room with photos, entry/exit comparison, works offline in the field
- Portals and communications — tenant, contractor, and staff self-service portals, SMS and email, two-way email sync, broadcast with consent controls
What makes it different
There are other property management systems. Chenashe is different in ways that matter for community housing:
- Cultural safety is in the system, not bolted on. Cultural identity, connection to Country, interpreter preferences, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty controls are fields in the record — not notes in a comment box. Tenants control their own consent and can opt out of aggregate reporting at any time.
- Lone-worker safety check-in. Staff working alone in the field can check in and out with automatic escalation if they don’t check back in on time. No other property management system in the Australian market offers this.
- AI-assisted drafting, human-approved. The system can draft inspection summaries, notices, and VCAT responses — but every AI output is labelled a suggestion, is never sent automatically, and is only generated where the tenant has consented. Nothing reaches a tenant or a tribunal without a person approving it.
- Arrears risk-trend scoring. Beyond “who owes money today”, the system surfaces which tenants are trending toward arrears so your team can intervene early — with support, not with a notice.
- Self-serve trial. You can start using Chenashe in minutes with no sales call. Your account comes preloaded with sample data so you can explore the system properly, then clear it with one click when you’re ready for real tenants.
Built for data you’re accountable for
Community housing providers hold sensitive data about vulnerable people. Chenashe is built with that responsibility in mind:
- Hosted in Australia (Sydney region)
- Mandatory two-factor authentication on every staff account
- Row-level data isolation enforced in the database, not just the application
- Offline data encrypted on-device and wiped at sign-out
- Every change written to a full audit log
- Card payments handled by Stripe — card details never touch the system
- Security controls mapped to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and SOC 2 criteria
Pricing
Three plans, all features included, no per-user fees:
- Starter — $199/month (up to 25 properties)
- Growth — $399/month (up to 100 properties)
- Scale — $799/month (unlimited properties)
Annual billing saves two months. Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial — no credit card required.
See the full breakdown at chenashe.au/pricing.
Try it
We built Chenashe because we needed it ourselves. Now it’s ready for every community housing provider that needs it too.
Questions? Reach us at hello@chenashe.au or visit chenashe.au/contact.