From the late 1910s onward, co-operative housing societies in cities like Bombay offered affordable housing by using the agency of community to protect against the vicissitudes of the market. At the same time, ideas of urban citizenship premised on the liberal individual received greater attention with a broadened franchise and became increasingly linked to social rights such as affordable housing. While the community and the individual are seen as opposed to one another in the discourse of citizenship, this paper suggests that they mutually informed and constituted one another between 1919 and 1980 in ways that have enduring significance for understandings of urban citizenship.