So, I think this bug started happening after the last update for Life and Death. I always have Neighborhood Stories off in the main settings. I noticed my game lagging a bit recently, and decided ...
Ideas
Having read somewhere that turning NS off in game options didn't always stick I took the route that instead of turning it off there I turned it off in the Manage Worlds area by not enabling any of the tabs in either the played or unplayed families. After using it for quite a while I decided I just didn't like what it gave me and since it caused problems after Lovestruck it's not enabled in my games even though it's still "on" in game options. I don't know if this will help you.
Thank you for the suggestion, I'll try that as a work around and see if it helps.