Characters deleted after update - but not my houses???!!

So i’ve been playing the sims, I recently updated it and all my households have gone. Even Penny Pizzaz, the Landgraabs, Fengs, literally ghost town! 

I do have mods and cc, however, when I tried to recover save all the houses I put in are still there (they all have cc) but no sims ! 

All my saves are still in the saves folder so I am very confused and was wondering if anyone knows how to fix this?? 

I have also unlinked my one drive, still nothing! when I go to recover save because I already recovered my save it says “no recovery saves are available” 

I don’t understand how all my characters have gone but my houses are still there. 

Please help as it does this everytime I update it, it shouldn’t be like this, it just makes me not want to support this game anymore. As you can imagine and have probably all endured before I have spent hours creating a storyline and families etc and for them to be gone is disheartening. 

I would rather all the houses go rather than families! I always save inbetween everything I do in the game and then save 3-4 times before I come off when I shouldn’t have to do that! it’s stressful ☹️( :’(