Seattle native who also grew up on Capitol Hill, and still lives here. As a home owner since the late 90s, the Amazon boom has dramatically increased my net worth.
But that said, I'd much rather have the house be worth $300k if it would mean the last 7 years hadn't happened. It's really been too much, too fast. I didn't buy a house here to get rich, I bought here because my family and friends are here.
The thing that really bugs me is the loss of community, and what exists where the sense of community used to be: crowding, the ever increasing spread of pockets of artificiality, pretentious restaurants, luxury cars swarming the hill, and outsiders absolutely as far as the eye can see.
Furthermore, if you look at the responses in this in comments on Reddit, or in comments on articles, you can see the response we get for saying that that the wholesale destruction of our community makes us uncomfortable: "shut up you fucking ingrate", or my favorite, from people who actually believe that they are liberal, "yeah, it sucks that people can't afford it, but I got mine".
We are talking about the wholesale, unchecked destruction of entire communities. Virtually all of my friends who don't own property are gone. We have neighbors from China who don't talk to anyone. Everyone is from someone else, and just here to consume or make it big or whatever. The property values are attracting people with real wealth and/or speculators, and if I wanted to live around Yuppie Gentrifiers, I would have moved to Madison Park.
There is very little sense of community left. I feel like Amazon should have made its own town somewhere else, and left us ours.