The fast-growing city of Cochabamba, Bolivia faces significant water supply challenges coupled with dwindling affordable land and limited services for disadvantaged residents. To combat these conjoined challenges, in 1999, a group of women launched a cooperative and bought land for a new community: Comunidad María Auxiliadora. They pursued a vision of secure collective tenure and affordable land and housing, targeting the needs of low-income women and children. The leaders aimed to preserve long-term affordability through such collective land ownership and mutual aid construction and savings. By constructing its own water supply and sewage system, the organization promoted an autonomous political movement of families and joined in a common struggle for urban services. The community became home to more than 700 households. However, they faced factional infighting and formally dissolved in 2019, revealing how difficult it can be to sustain innovative tenure arrangements, especially without state recognition and support. Drawing on more than a dozen interviews with both community leaders and dissidents as well as a site visit and consultation of a range of documents, it becomes clear that the story of Comunidad María Auxiliadora reveals both substantial achievement and disheartening limitations.