webservice doesn't need to write into $HOME/.kube, but direct use of kubectl to launch a deployment needs to be able to write some metadata into the directory.
After updating, $HOME/.kube should have perms something like:
$ ls -adl .kube drwxr-sr-x 3 tools.stashbot tools.stashbot 4096 Oct 25 2016 .kube
We could also make $HOME/.kube/config use the same chattr trick that we use for replica.my.cnf so that users can not accidentally delete the file.