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This paper examines opaque power relations amidst urban dwelling, waste, and state outsourcing of urban development. Drawing from ethnography among residents in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, who were holding onto dilapidated housing amid a failed redevelopment project, I explore how residents engaged with narrative and forms of cynicism as they navigated opaque channels of business and politics. This environment, which includes forms of usufructuary access, reveals power relations that are extremely unequal and yet extremely malleable due to their multiplicity. These residential engagements, I will argue, challenge our understanding of urban power relations within privatised urban expansion.