$ qemu-system-x86_64 -vnc unix:~/root-owned/foo.sock
qemu-system-x86_64: -vnc unix:/home/crobinso/root-owned/foo.sock: Failed to start VNC server: Failed to bind socket to /home/crobinso/root-owned/foo.sock: Address already in use
...which is techinically true, but the real error is that we failed to
unlink. So report it.
This may seem pathological but it's a real possibility via libvirt.