Those who knew Cory Beebe worried about him. They worried about his long history of abusing drugs and about the unhoused man staying warm on frigid winter nights.
But on Jan. 17, it wasn’t the cold or the dope that took his life.
Fire claimed the 37-year-old man, who was found in the attic of a vacant house in the 1500 block of South Eighth Street.
“Our preliminary finding is that he died of smoke inhalation,” Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon said. “Of course, we won’t know for sure until we get our toxicology reports back.”
In winter, fire poses a distinct risk for the unhoused as vacant buildings throughout the community fill with squatters who build fires to stay warm, Springfield Fire Chief Ed Canny said.
While Beebe’s death is the first for this year, the city has already experienced multiple fires believed to have been started by squatters.
“House fires are started by humans or electrical or mechanical failure,” Canny said. “Most of these vacant houses don’t have any electrical or mechanical things.”
This leaves humans as the primary suspects when a vacant building burns.
Canny said in January 2024 there were seven vacant buildings in the city that burned. And as of Jan. 24, there have been five fires in abandoned buildings since the first of the year.
Homeless advocate Julie Benson said she has seen how unhoused individuals build fires and it can be frightening.
“Anything that’s inside the house, they’ll burn it,” she said. “I’ve seen some of the abandoned houses they live in, and you wouldn’t want a rat living in some of those places. They’ve gone into it and started a fire to stay warm. … They’ll take the house apart inside and start burning it. They Dumpster dive and so they’ll find materials in Dumpsters. It’s survival mode.”
Providing shelter beds or subsidized apartments doesn’t always keep people from choosing to live on the street, she added.
Benson noted that she knew Beebe, who died in a vacant house despite being offered opportunities to live in safer environs.
“Boy, he had a heart of gold. He was always helpful when he would see my van or when he would see my car pull up,” she said. “I would ask him if he needed things. And he was always trying to help somebody else as well. So, when I would give him a sleeping bag, he would ask to get a sleeping bag for somebody else. Or if I asked him if he was hungry and I took him into McDonald’s, he would want to get something for a buddy.”
Benson said from what she knew of Beebe, he was on the Asperger’s spectrum and had suffered some trauma years ago.
“He was a very nice young man, but very lost,” she said. “Helping Hands had gotten him into an apartment, I think last year sometime. I don’t think he stayed one night in it. As with so many of them, they suffer from not only the drug addiction, but some kind of mental health trauma.”
Coroner Allmon said he is waiting for the toxicology report in part to learn whether drug intoxication contributed to Beebe not waking during the fire.
Benson said the reasons people reject housing alternatives are complex and persuading them to leave the streets takes patience.
“You have to build trust with them. You can’t just go out one time and say, ‘Hey, it’s cold out, do you want to go to the shelter?’ Ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re going to say ‘no.'”
She added there are a multitude of excuses she has heard: “The shelter takes their phones away. They have to interact with other people. They have PTSD. They don’t like to be cooped up for that long. They can’t do their drugs while they’re at the shelter.
“They would rather stay out in the cold, try to stay warm and get somebody to maybe give them something to eat and wait until the next day when things might be just a little bit better.”
Josh Sabo, the coordinator for Heartland Continuum of Care, an umbrella group for helping the homeless in Sangamon County, said there are other reasons individuals remain on the streets. He noted some are sex offenders, who are not allowed in shelters, and others have a history of violence, which also makes them unsuitable.
Fire Chief Canny said he anticipates a heightened risk for more vacant buildings burning as long as the weather remains cold. Just what can be done to solve this hazard is a bit of an open question.
“The homeless issue is not something that we in firefighting can solve,” he said.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2025.
Good evening,
While I certainly understand the desire to share with the public the tragic reality that is the unhoused crisis, and the unfortunate outcome of the fires resulting from it, I do not believe naming the man in this article and speaking of him in this way is the way to do it. Each and every one of those individuals has a mother, a family, maybe even children of their own. Profiting from the pain they’ve already experienced is reckless and I implore this news outlet to consider their platform and do better by the community it’s intended to educate and support.
I thought Illinois Times was more competent than this. I wonder if your paid advertisers are impressed by the lack of quality work published here.
Not mentioning Cory’s name in the article is in my opinion sweeping the underlying problem of homelessness under the rug. That has been going on for too long in this city. IT isn’t going to profit from this article about him, but it might bring more attention to the plight of the homeless persons. Yes Cory has family and friends. It’s been my experience that not enough attention has been brought to the fact there is a number of homeless folks that die each year due to drugs and in other ways. Investigations… not enough is being done to stop the number of deaths each year.