No-root install nix-user-chroot failure

After getting nix-user-chroot from github, creating ~/.nix, and running

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="" nix-user-chroot ~/.nix bash -c 'curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh -s -- --no-daemon'

I get:

performing a single-user installation of Nix...
copying Nix to /nix/store...

installing 'nix-2.25.2'
building '/nix/store/v28xaq08scl7s734iq4lbxg2l8v55z8r-user-environment.drv'...
error: builder for '/nix/store/v28xaq08scl7s734iq4lbxg2l8v55z8r-user-environment.drv' failed to produce output path for output 'out' at '/p/home/jraa/$HOME/.local/share/nix/root/nix/store/4887r8dwmrmyv4zczzm1zww2il9pvm9w-user-environment'
/tmp/nix-binary-tarball-unpack.deShIpUdBp/unpack/nix-2.25.2-x86_64-linux/install: unable to install Nix into your default profile

The literal $HOME seems weird to me.

This is on an HPC system, RHEL 8.8, /p/home is a luster filesystem. I am just another user, no privileges. I’m trying to use nix-user-chroot.

How can I get past this error? Am I going about non-root usage in the wrong way?

Thanks