I decided to move my /var/tmp to my /home partition because it has more space. I symlinked /var/tmp -> /home/portage/tmp but then Portage then spewed PERMISION DENIED errors as it tried to access /home/portage/tmp/* instead of /home/portage/tmp/portage. I also moved my distfiles to my /home partition and that works fine using a symlink and that works fine.
fix will be in Portage 2.0.12