As analogy: "It sucks that my peers earn less than me because they are part of <X disenfranchised group>"; You: "Why don't you just take your extra income and give it to them?"

What I'm doing now is renting out that house at less than my mortgage whilst living in a different country with higher taxes and which generally takes better care of its people (the blight that is the Tories notwithstanding).

That said, you can't expect people not to play the game if they're forced to play the game. Those of us in the western world pretty much all live in capitalist countries; the best we can do is ensure that we're doing well in our own lives whilst trying to fix the game for those who aren't doing so well. Taking out a HELOC and giving the money to friends is a substantial financial risk that jeopardises our own comfort without having a clear positive impact on those friends and without really fixing the underlying problem. It's like giving cash to a homeless person instead of giving them housing and support -- the cash will be gone soon, and the system that resulted in their homelessness won't be fixed, nor will you have prevented any future homelessness.

tl;dr, you can own a house and live comfortably whilst still lamenting the fact that your friends can't, and this isn't an inherently hypocritical stance. You're just lamenting the fact that the game you're playing necessarily has winners and losers, and wishing that would change.