(13)Permission denied: access to /~me denied - apache

Question

I am trying to configure Apache httpd.conf (on my CentOS 6.4) to allow access to my user directory (i.e. ~me/public_html/index.html).
I changed the original httpd.conf (i.e. out-of-the-box) as follows:
[root#myhost www]# diff /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.orig.out-of-the-box
366c366
< #UserDir disabled
---
> UserDir disabled
373c373
< UserDir public_html
---
> #UserDir public_html
This should in principle provide access to http://myhost/~me but instead, I am getting the dreaded error:
You don't have permission to access /~me on this server.
I checked the file /var/log/httpd/error_log and, sure enough, it reads:
(13)Permission denied: access to /~me denied
The first weird thing I noticed is that a / is prepended to ~me.
Where does that leading / come from?
Is it only a "red herring"?
Or is this pointing to the root cause of the problem (i.e. something else I need to modify in httpd.conf)?
Most importantly, since I know that my ~me/public_html is has world-readable permissions, how do I troubleshoot a problem like this?
Is there a way to find out why "access to /~me denied"?
SELinux?
httpd.conf?
directory permissions?
all of the above?
Update 1, answering the 2 questions in the comments by #UlrichSchwarz below:
The home directory does seem to have the 'x' permission:
[root#myhost ~]# ls -lad /home/me
drwxr-xr-x. 33 me me 4096 Feb 8 16:30 /home/me
SELinux info on public_html:
[root#myhost ~]# ls -Z -d /home/me/public_html/
drwxrwxr-x. me me unconfined_u:object_r:file_t:s0 /home/me/public_html/
Update 2, after I verified that this is indeed an SELinux issue (thanks to the tip by #Scolytus):
I ran the command:
chcon -R -t httpd_user_content_t /home/me/public_html/
Still no go.
[root#myhost ~]# ls -Z -d /home/me/public_html/
drwxrwxr-x. me me unconfined_u:object_r:httpd_user_content_t:s0 /home/me/public_html/
Then I ran "Allow HTTPD to read home directories" from the command line:
setsebool -P httpd_enable_homedirs=1
Still no go.
/var/log/httpd/error_log now shows (in addition to the (13)permission denied error) the following:
[notice] SELinux policy enabled; httpd running as context system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0
[notice] suEXEC mechanism enabled (wrapper: /usr/sbin/suexec)
[notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ...
[notice] Digest: done
[notice] Apache/2.2.15 (Unix) DAV/2 configured -- resuming normal operations
Perhaps the problem lies in the discrepancy between context_system_u and httpd_user_content_t?
What else do I need to do? (without disabling SELinux completely, that is)
Update 3, thanks to information in #lserni's answer, I discovered the ausearch command:
ausearch -m avc --start today
Which provided the following output:
time->Fri Jul 4 09:16:44 2014
type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1404479804.256:1312): arch=40000003 syscall=196 success=no exit=-13 a0=12c2c80 a1=bfeb1d00 a2=a34ff4 a3=2008171 items=0 ppid=5880 pid=5886 auid=0 uid=48 gid=48 euid=48 suid=48 fsuid=48 egid=48 sgid=48 fsgid=48 tty=(none) ses=193 comm="httpd" exe="/usr/sbin/httpd" subj=unconfined_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 key=(null)
type=AVC msg=audit(1404479804.256:1312): avc: denied { getattr } for pid=5886 comm="httpd" path="/home/me" dev=dm-3 ino=2 scontext=unconfined_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0 tcontext=system_u:object_r:file_t:s0 tclass=dir
Huh? Why /home/me and not /home/me/public_html?
Here is the output of ls -Zd /home/me/:
drwxr-xr-x. me me system_u:object_r:file_t:s0 /home/me/
Should I run the chcon -t httpd_user_content_t on /home/me, too?
Continuing to research...
Update 4: Success!
I ran the command:
chcon -t httpd_user_content_t /home/me/
And all is well now.
[root#myhost sa]# ls -Z -d /home/me/
drwxr-xr-x. me me system_u:object_r:httpd_user_content_t:s0 /home/me/

Answer 1

I've seen a slightly different version of the command you gave, supplied by sealert:
SELinux denied access to /var/www/html/file1 requested by httpd.
/var/www/html/file1 has a context used for sharing by different
program. If you would like to share /var/www/html/file1 from httpd
also, you need to change its file context to public_content_t. If
you did not intend to this access, this could signal a intrusion
attempt.
Allowing Access:
You can alter the file context by executing chcon -t public_content_t
'/var/www/html/file1'
Fix Command:
chcon -t public_content_t '/var/www/html/file1'
how do I troubleshoot a problem like this?
Most SELinux-related information is generally in the auditd logs, but you probably want some tool such as sealert to decode it for you. I've done a brief search and came up with this tool that I didn't know of, but seems interesting: SELinux GUI.
Addendum: Some examples with semanage

Answer 2

I can't check immediately, but I recall that commenting out the UserDir disabled isn't the same as enabling!
More specifically, I think you need to include a line in your https.conf file
Userdir enabled me