Yes, they can.

Many (many!) have leveraged their equity into buying more houses to rent out for income, and/or into all sorts of HELOC-related silliness.

I don't think peolle realize how stark the divide is between people with homes and people without, especially for anyone who bought before 2020. We've created, almost overnight, a massive and likely permanent underclass, and we have no intention of putting the kinds of supports in place to deal with the problems that will create over the next few decades as renters are broken by retirement and AI.

We've substituted paying fair wages and having real retirement plans with house value, and now we're on the verge of slamming the door on a huge portion of our society by locking them out of home equity at the same time we're diluting their earnings.

Yes, Musk et al are an extreme example, but the equity gap is real.