I've just made this account to shed some serious light on this issue.

Going to get straight to the point with this.

I checked my pip boy and sanctuary hills that had 85% happiness, 18 settlers and enough beds, food and water for diamond city and all neighbouring settlements is now at 70% and 0 on everything but settlers and happiness. First i thought i was attacked then i blamed my self for not turning it into a military base as i was watching whatever rotating object there was during THAT loading screen.

When i got there, everything seemed intact still so i checked my pip boy to ensure it reflected that. To my surprise now the pip boy has everything at normal but my happiness remained declined. So i left to do a few missions and checked my pip boy again only to find that my happiness is now at 48% at santuary hills and everything was back at 0 again... i went back again and everything still seemed normal. Checked the pip boy and it now reflects everything at normal, yet my happiness was still declined to 48%.

Clearly a bug. If this has been posted before then this will be another reminder to developers to please fix this and an explnation to those who are having the same issue.

If you have a solution please post. I looked around a bit and someone mentioned to take down all shops but it didnt help. Again there isnt much on this yet.

I have that too. There are some other people reporting the same bug. Hope it get fixed soon. It's not a game breaking bug but it's a really annoying one.

Yea i guess it doesnt really stop you from progressing but it does make doing anything to settlements useless. There goes that part of the game.