“It’s pretty sad what is happening in my city,” says Chad, “but they must have a market for it.”

You betcha, Chad. Another reason why Vancouver is so unique these days. In Toronto, for example, you usually have to go to a sleazy place next to a tat parlour and a kick-boxing studio, go through a door covered in metal bars and talk to a woman with a nose ring to get a payday loan. But not in YVR, baby, where debt, financial servitude and negative cash flow are mainstream. You want some money because you’re broke and willing to pay 19%? Just come to Vancity.

Quietly, Canada’s largest credit union, with $18.4 billion in assets, has entered the slimiest little corner of the financial universe – giving emergency loans to people who have run out of money and are desperate enough to pay anything to get it. “Need money fast?” the ads say. “We can help with that.”

The interesting point is that Vancity’s a major force in keeping the Vancouver unreal estate market alive. Its current portfolio of residential mortgages clocks in at about $11,000,000,000, and you can presume the bulk of it is high-ratio, high-risk, CMHC-backed loans in a city where the average detached house costs 15 times the average income. But Vancity is not just a quasi-bank. These guys are highly aggressive.

In the most unaffordable, dangerous, unstable housing market in North America, Vancity has been a leader in leveraging people into real estate they can’t actually afford. For example, the company is now willing to ‘loan’ virgins half of their 5% down payment at the nominal rate of 0.01% so they’ll qualify to borrow half a million dollars. That, of course, is basically free money.

Then there’s the ‘Mixer Mortgage’, so you can buy a house with “a partner, family members, a roommate or friends.” What a legal quagmire that can turn out to be. And Vancity is still in the business of liar loans, letting self-employed people state their incomes, then adding 15% more for qualifying purposes and even offering 35-year amortizations.

There are mortgages for people who want to turn their garages into houses. And the ‘Springboard’ mortgage is set up to basically give people homes worth $300,000 or less. “If you live in non-profit housing, are on a low income, and have no money saved for a down payment, this program could be right for you. If you qualify, we’ll loan you the money for a 20% down payment, plus a mortgage for the balance of the purchase price.”

So what happens if you buy a piece of real estate without actually having much, or any, money? If you let Vancity give you a 0.01% downpayment loan, or take the cash-back loot they’re offering, or just give you 100% financing because you’re low-income and struggling with no savings? What happens if you become so debt-strapped buying a house that you can’t afford food in week three of a long four-week month?

Simple. Get a Vancity “Fair & Fast” payday loan, and start shelling over 19% interest.

There are many reasons why real estate costs what it does in Vancouver. Vancity is one of them. So is the average savings rate, which is negative (the only province). Plus the social disease called house lust. Add this to the usual list of geography, climate and foreign cash. Truth is, the housing market’s turned into a speculative casino, and everybody is playing, aided and abetted by a near-bank largely unencumbered by federal regulation (credit unions in BC are overseen by the provincial Financial Institutions Commission, not Ottawa), or much of a conscience.

But, like Chad says, Vancity must know what it’s doing.

Or at least what’s coming.