Methinks you're severely overlooking the cost of maintaining temperate-lifestyle behavior in deeply frozen environments.

Thawing meat takes time & energy. It may very well be more convenient to just eat it frozen, especially if you're working outside and your lunch is frozen by ambient temperatures as the norm.

Keep water constantly running thru the pipes

That's a LOT of water - where do you get it from? where do you put it when it's too cool to use? Remember, this is an environment where most water is frozen; liquid water is an anomaly.

More importantly: you're overlooking where the septic drainage pipe is going. You don't "constantly run water thru" that pipe. It doesn't go to a community sewage system. It goes...somewhere out in the back yard. You can't keep the full length of that pipe, and where it's going, sufficiently warm.

insulate [pipes] better

Insulation delays thermal loss, but does not halt it. Where is the heat source? heating coils? that's more costly energy being pumped into a low-value pipe to fight extreme temperature differentials compounded by the thermal mass of water.

What you're imputing should be in place will cost a lot more than you expect. We're talking an environment where dirt itself is frozen deep down, all working at sinking any heat you pump in.

block heaters work

Ok, the block isn't frozen then. But your tires are - literally, the rubber on your tires is rock solid - and the flat side of the tire contacting the ground doesn't flex when rotating so you get an extremely bumpy ride just for starters. Speaking of starters, your starter is frozen. And the door handles. The door hinge may not give. The battery may not start. Your wiper fluid ("works to 40 below!" and temps hit -50 last night) is a block of ice. You'll have to heat the entire car just to make it function in a tolerable manner ... easier just to get on a bike (which you can easily keep warm inside) or walk.

[several imputations of blame on poverty]

Consider the _relative_ poverty. Just flushing the toilet or opening the car door just went from thoughtlessly free to significant/nontrivial cost. Crops are nearly nonexistent, almost any food not local meat has to be shipped thousands of miles to a low-demand location. Suddenly EVERYTHING costs much more just because it's so blasted cold out. Your (yes, you) normal expenses just went up 10x. Want to eat? cheapest way is go hunting out your back door. Want to, er, egest? outhouse.

The people there aren't necessarily "poor", it's that the cost of living - in a manner not consistent with certain realities of the environment - is very high.

his camera freezing wasn't something I thought modern cameras were especially prone to

Again, you underestimate how very cold it is outside there, and how pervasive that cold is. Modern cameras, generally speaking, are not built for use at seriously sub-zero temperatures.

interviews don't need to be done out in the cold

But talking to "the man in the street" does. He wanted to interview people he'd never met, people who were just walking by. If you're talking about serious outdoor cold, as regards to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another, you're going to find yourself in the difficult position of trying to talk to people rushing from one oasis of warmth to another and who are uninterested in talking to strangers about how cold it is.