Trying to help renter with high rate loan issue

[Shera Gregory]

We have a renter who has been paying rent via electronic payment every two weeks on the same day as his paycheck. This was working very well until a few weeks ago when the payments started bouncing. Because of our good history with him we sat down together to go through his bank statements, etc to see what was going on. It quickly became clear that he got himself into a jam by getting a loan against the title of his vehicle. 

Based on the documents we could see (which did NOT include anything from the start of the loan) it appears that over the past three months he has paid about $1000 on a $1600 loan and has paid down about $40 in principal. They say he still owes $1700 and all his recent payments are for "fees" and interest. I have heard bad things about "payday" lenders but this is my first encounter with the reality of what is being done. It's a terrible practice that preys on people who don't understand what they are getting into. We are trying to figure out what, if anything, we can do to help this person dig himself out. Any suggestions?