Egypt has long been described as an illiberal democracy, in which the process of ballot-box electoralism is either loosely or inversely related to both structural frameworks for administrative enfranchisement and spheres for public debate (Blaydes 2011; Zakaria 1997). However, during the previous regime of Hosni Mubarak public discourses about citizens’ welfare did in fact create possibilities for the amelioration of some key public health issues, such as the extension of sanitation infrastructure (Arefin 2019). Under the current regime of Abdel Fatah el-Sisi that possibility has diminished, with active processes to recapture state-claimed resources that had been tentatively settled in the public favor under Mubarak’s regime, especially in terms of land tenure (Michaelson 2017; Sims 2016). This paper examines the history of land tenure claims in Ezbet Khairallah, one of Cairo’s largest informal settlements, as an exemplar of how communities negotiate precarity in the context of shifting illiberal regimes (governmental, economic, and infrastructural) and at a variety of scales (nation-state, municipal). It does so though looking at a longstanding court case brought by residents of the area to secure tenure and the ways in which that process has intersected with the expansion of potable water and wastewater networks. Beginning with collective work by residents to build stable housing in the area and to halt repeated attempts to evict them, going through the 1999 decision by the supreme administrative court that the Governate of Cairo must sell them the land, and on to the still in progress extensions of multiple Governate-run utility networks, the paper examines the ways in which residents of the area work in formal and informal ways to gain recognition and stability for their neighborhood.