SAN DIEGO -- The tough economy has our county's elderly and disabled population bracing for the worst. Cuts to the state's supplemental security income mean thousands will have to live with less.

Fifty-seven dollars a month doesn't sound like a lot of money but that money could make or break thousands of San Diegans.

Sixty-nine-year-old Jo Ann Siegel lives on $934 a month -- money she collects from Social Security and SSI, the state's supplemental security income.

Siegel lives at the Potiker Family Senior Residence in downtown San Diego where rent is almost $700 a month.

"There are times where I exist -- apart from my food and my rent -- that I sometimes, I have a dollar, maybe $1.80 for the whole month," Siegel said.

That $1.80 may disappear as well.

On July 1, the state is cutting SSI payments by $20. This after SSI was already cut $37 last month to help close the state's budget deficit. Those payments go to some 80,000 seniors and disabled citizens in San Diego County.

"This is going to be a joke, okay. It's not going to be good. It's going to be a nightmare," Siegel said.

"The state, they're absolutely shooting themselves in the foot," Paul Downey, who operates San Diego's Senior Community Centers, said.

Downey said cutting these SSI payments now will force seniors to seek more expensive emergency help -- and eventually assisted living -- paid for by taxpayer money.

"What we're going to see is, they're going to fail. They're going to cost us more money on the back end," Downey said.

Siegel isn't waiting for that to happen. She organized a petition -- signed by hundreds of seniors -- asking the state to reverse the SSI cuts. Otherwise, she'll have to learn to live with less.

"A person's medicine and everything... let alone clothes or going out to eat, that's over for me and most of us here," Siegel said.

10News contacted the governor's office and all 12 of our local state representatives. The governor's office said, "the state needs to cut back just like every family and business in California is doing."

Senator Christine Kehoe was the only representative to get back to us. She said Democratic legislators were able to save more SSI money than what the governor originally proposed.