Two weeks after the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles switched to an appointment-only model and moved to “eliminate” walk-in services, Deputy Director Tonya Laney says the agency has seen more “happy” customers than in the past.

“We made this move to ensure that we could provide the services that the customers expect from us, when they book an appointment,” she tells the Weekly, adding that, during the first week, the agency took the majority of customers’ appointments on time.

The DMV has reported a 2.4% decrease in the use of online services since July 2021. More than 200,000 transactions that could have been done online were instead done in person, leading to long waits for customers with appointments.

Commercial and rural offices don’t have to make the switch, which went into effect on August 15. And walk-ins are still welcome on Saturdays for all services, and Monday-Friday for vehicle movement permits, license plate drop-offs, driver’s license reinstatements, past-due debts, kiosk transactions and vehicle inspections.

The Nevada DMV cites “sustained staff shortages” as a catalyst for transitioning to requiring appointments, and eventually phasing out in-person services that can be completed online. Similar moves have been made in Colorado and Illinois, where officials have said they experienced high customer volumes in 2021.

But unlike in those two states, Nevada appointments can only be made online. The DMV website instructs customers to not call or email for an appointment.

Having to make an appointment could make it much tougher for vulnerable populations to access DMV services—a “lifeline” for some, says Kat Calvin, founder of Project ID, a nationwide nonprofit that has helped more than 9,000 people obtain identification so that they can access medical and social services and apply for jobs, shelter or housing.

“You need that for everything … to get most types of health care, to stay at most shelters and get food from most food banks ... for a bank account, for literally anything that you need to do in your life,” she says. “Particularly, if you are a person who is in a vulnerable situation and you’re trying to pull yourself out of that, you need ID.”

Calvin says many of her clients are foster children, new citizens, disabled, low-income, seniors, veterans, unhoused, transitioning from prison and domestic violence survivors. “One very common tactic of abusers is to lock up documents,” she explains. “We have a lot of survivors who’ve escaped, and they aren’t able to get a job because they don’t have their documents.”

Calvin says requiring appointments—and requiring them to be made exclusively online—adds a barrier and possible delays for populations who might desperately need identification services from the DMV. “You have to have access to the internet to make an appointment, which means if you are unhoused … you have to go to a library or find a place to use the internet,” she says.

Calvin also points out that Nevada’s DMV appointment portal requires a phone number—something only 1% of her clients have, she says.

Third-party organizations, such as Project ID, can provide a phone number for clients to use, and assist those who don’t have the access or ability to make a DMV appointment on their own.

A spokesman for Nevada DMV tells the Weekly that customers who don’t have a phone number “can enter a number from a relief agency or even a known disconnected number such as 702-555-1212. However, they need to ensure they write down the date and time of the appointment as they will not receive text confirmation.”

Still, any delays in obtaining assistance and/or ID can be critical for those who rely on public services or who live on the street, Calvin stresses.

“The difference between getting it done now, or maybe in six months, or maybe never … You don’t know what your life is going to look like,” she says. “We just had a client who was deaf; she was living in a tent on skid row—very dangerous for her. … We got her ID. And just last week, she told me she was placed into housing.”

Laney says the DMV is aware of the challenges vulnerable populations might have accessing services. Well before switching to an appointment-only model, the agency had established “partnerships and outreach” with organizations including Catholic Charities, the Governor’s Office of New Americans, law enforcement, human trafficking nonprofits and housing facilities or transitional programs for people who have recently been released from prison.

People who do try to walk into a DMV location for a service that requires an appointment can still find assistance at the information centers in each office, Laney says. Staff there can work one-on-one with customers to identify the barriers to making an appointment, connect them to needed services, educate people about what services are available online and show how to book an appointment.

“If it’s something that they can’t assist them with, and they don’t have an appointment, those staff are also able to book them a future appointment to come back and see us, if it’s something that does take a transaction that needs to be done at a window,” Laney explains, adding that the intent of shifting online was to better serve all customers, not just those with appointments.

“The customers that do need to walk in—and we know we’ll have them—will be able to just [walk] in and get the service that they need very quickly,” Laney says. “Because we’ve moved so much online, it will free up the resources that we have available in person.”

She adds that the appointment-only model will need to be in place for a while before the DMV starts to see shorter wait times more consistently.

The agency’s worker shortage calls for some form of relief for employees who might already be strained, and further stretched by influxes of walk-in customers. At press time, the Nevada DMV had 178 vacancies, “85 of which are in the field services division. Of the 85, 49 are in Southern Nevada offices,” a DMV spokesman says.

Calvin says she understands why some DMVs are moving more communications and services online, but they need to make it easier for the people who need those services the most.

“It’s the group of people who we just sort of forget exist. But they are exactly the people who need our services the most,” she says. “The DMV needs to understand they are a lifeline for people.”

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