Permits for construction of single-family homes have been inching up, but they're still a fraction of what they were before the Great Recession. This chart shows permits for Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit counties. County-level data are not available yet for 2020, though preliminary figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that permits were up 7.5% from 2019 across the Cleveland metropolitan area.