Any idea on how to fix “data at the root level is invalid. line 1 position 1” in visual studio 2019 in a xamarin project?

I’m totally at a loss, I have been working with my mentor on this issue and neither one of us have figured it out thus far. As far as we can tell the correct sdk is installed. Honestly I don’t even remember all what we did to try to fix it. I tried using the 2017 version, didn’t work. I’ve tried a lot of different things. I’ve cloned the project, downloaded it in a zip file, not working either way. I don’t even know where to start looking. He said he would get back to me when he found the solution but just in case one of y’all know that would be awesome because I probably won’t hear from him until next week.