Creating a Wine Prefix

I ran the command export WINEPREFIX="~/.wine_custom" in an attempt to make a wineprefix to get a game working. However, no output was made, so I assumed it worked. However, when I used the next command, winetricks corefonts dxvk dotnet472, I got this output:

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warning: Your version of wine  is no longer supported upstream. You should upgrade to 5.x
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Executing mkdir -p ~
ls: cannot access '~/.wine_custom/drive_c': No such file or directory
grep: ~/.wine_custom/*.reg: No such file or directory
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WINEPREFIX INFO:
Drive C: 

Registry info:
~/.wine_custom/*.reg:
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warning: wine cmd.exe /c echo '%AppData%' returned empty string, error message "wine: invalid directory ~/.wine_custom in WINEPREFIX: not an absolute path" 
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What did I do wrong?

Edit: After a bit of experimentation, I got the first command to work. but I now have a different output with the 2nd command.

Executing mkdir -p /home/username mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/home/username’: Permission denied

warning: Note: command mkdir -p /home/username returned status 1. Aborting.

How do I give permission to the command?