[tex-live] textlive seems to ignore top of home tree

[hometreetexlive.9.virgilinux at dfgh.net]

Dear All:
I am using texlive on debian squeeze and an NFS-based system.
For some time I had difficulties making texlive find LaTeX classes which I put in my "home tree".

After much trial and error, and following some suggestions I found at:
http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/configuring.html
(thanks, you know who you are!)
specifically running: 
kpsewhich -debug=32 packagename.sty
I became aware that texlive does look inside TEXMFHOME/tex (for us, $HOME/texmf/tex )  but NOT  TEXMFHOME=$HOME/texmf
That is, texlive ignores the "top" (root) of the home tree while searching for LaTeX classes and style files (see example below).

I never encountered information explicitly stating this fact, and in fact naively imagined that by placing a package at the "top" of the home tree (as opposed to a subdirectory within  $HOME\texmf\), texlive would find it more easily.

The above behaviour seems reproducible 100% of the time.  Is it intended  (a "feature"), or  a "bug", or the result of a non-standard configuration of our system?

How/where can one adjust texmf.cnf or whichever appropriate to make texlive consider the top of the tree so that either 
$HOME\texmf\mypackage.cls 
or $HOME\texmf\tex\mypackage.cls 
is found?

Thanks in advance.

Virgil
Example:
a) with the package IEEEtran2.cls in $HOME/texmf/IEEEtran2.cls
$ kpsewhich IEEEtran2.cls
<<nothing reported>>

$ kpsewhich -debug=32 IEEEtran2.cls
kdebug:start search(file=texmf.cnf, must_exist=1, find_all=1, path=/usr/share/texmf/web2c:/usr/share/texmf-texlive/web2c:/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c).
kdebug:start search(files=[ls-R ls-r], must_exist=1, find_all=1, path=/var/lib/texmf:/usr/local/share/texmf:/usr/share/texmf:/usr/share/texmf-texlive).
kdebug:search([ls-R ls-r]) => /var/lib/texmf/ls-R /usr/local/share/texmf/ls-R /usr/share/texmf/ls-R /usr/share/texmf-texlive/ls-R
kdebug:start search(file=aliases, must_exist=1, find_all=1, path=/var/lib/texmf:/usr/local/share/texmf:/usr/share/texmf:/usr/share/texmf-texlive).
kdebug:search(aliases) =>
kdebug:kpse_find_file: searching for IEEEtran2.cls of type tex (from texmf.cnf)
kdebug:start search(files=[IEEEtran2.cls], must_exist=0, find_all=0, path=.:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-config/tex/kpsewhich//:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-var/tex/kpsewhich//:/home/rodxxx/texmf/tex/kpsewhich//:/etc/texmf/tex/kpsewhich//:!!/var/lib/texmf/tex/kpsewhich//:!!/usr/local/share/texmf/tex/kpsewhich//:!!/usr/share/texmf/tex/kpsewhich//:!!/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/kpsewhich//:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-config/tex/generic//:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-var/tex/generic//:/home/rodxxx/texmf/tex/generic//:/etc/texmf/tex/generic//:!!/var/lib/texmf/tex/generic//:!!/usr/local/share/texmf/tex/generic//:!!/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic//:!!/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic//:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-config/tex///:/home/rodxxx/.texmf-var/tex///:/home/rodxxx/texmf/tex///:/etc/texmf/tex///:!!/var/lib/texmf/tex///:!!/usr/local/share/texmf/tex///:!!/usr/share/texmf/tex///:!!/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex///).
kdebug:search([IEEEtran2.cls]) =>

NOTICE: class not found
==================
(b) Now with the class at $HOME/texmf/tex/IEEEtran2.cls

$ kpsewhich IEEEtran2.cls
/home/rodxxx/texmf/tex/IEEEtran2.cls

NOTICE: class correctly found