If the above is true (and not fake news), I would like to understand how the industry was expected to survive with 2/3rd of its customer base taken away in an instant; and what alternative services these customers would have been routed to...
"[...]the official, who spoke to journalists on condition of anonymity, said that if the rule had kicked in, some two-thirds of borrowers wouldn't qualify for a payday loan."
Unless you want to insinuate that NPR completely fabricated this story to drive engagement, you should probably just say "incorrect" or something like that.
But there still exists a credit system for those borrowers. It's called paying late.
It might be mean to landlords to make them, essentially, the lenders of last resort. But just because you accounted for something more accurately, by forcing people to take payday loans to not get evicted, doesn't mean you have achieved a normatively positive thing.
Why should it survive. It's usury, plain and simple.