At the risk of necromancy and complaining about my own problems, I'd like to bring light to
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=14056
I'm running into this exact problem, because I'm setting up continuous builds as a user that isn't meant to be logged in with, which means that having a ~/.android location is problematic as ~ is /.
Is there any chance of this being addressed in the near future?