By default, this is only true when a partition has a dedicated unix user.
Inside a webrunner, we can have:
  ${buildout:directory} = /srv/slapgrid/slappart0/srv/runner/instance/slappart1
  but $HOME = /srv/slapgrid/slappart0

Zope partitions override HOME as follows:
  home-path = ${buildout:directory}