Are rising house prices good?

I have heard comments on the radio that rising house prices is good. This seems warped to me. Is it good when food prices rise? Shelter is necessary to live. Esp. in the U.S., where it is usually illegal to be homeless. It's too bad that some people were persuaded by the financial elite to regard their homes as investments rather than as shelter. But if housing prices continually rose faster than incomes, eventually nobody could afford shelter, as rising house prices lead to rising rents.

Of course, rising house prices are good for the investors who bought a lot of foreclosed property cheap. And they are in the financial class that writes laws and financial columns, and shape our beliefs to their own benefit.