Your first problem is using Dan Savage as a legitimate source, bud. People will always complain about a changing city, and will fight growth tooth and nail despite how good it is for the area. Capitol Hill used to have high crime rates, junkies everywhere, needles all over Cal Anderson Park (okay, that one's still true). Robberies, burglaries, assaults were high as well. Gentrification can be, and for Seattle it is, a good thing. South Lake Union used to be nothing but druggies and run down industrial warehouses; now it's a booming center of technology and business with nice restaurants and convenient commutes. Amazon has brought a ton of money into Seattle - money that wouldn't have been there otherwise, especially after WaMu collapsed and the city lost its biggest private employer. Instead of blaming Amazon and other tech companies for "ruining" this city, Seattle should be thanking them for the large amounts of capital, tax income, and money coming in. Those highly paid tech workers everyone complains about - where do they spend their money? In local shops, in local restaurants, getting their hair cut by local barbers and stylists. They pay their taxes for transportation. There have been a couple of shop owners I've talked to who directly told me that their business had been saved from going under due to the influx of newly transplanted customers with large salaries.

Gentrification has the possibility of being a bad thing, but by and large would you rather live in the Brooklyn of today or the Brooklyn of the 1970s? Would you rather live in Capitol Hill today or the Belltown of the 1980s? If you can't adapt to a changing economy by adding new skills to your resume, then the problem is not with tech workers coming in - the problem's with you. If you're getting pushed out of the neighborhoods you want to live in and do nothing to prevent that on a personal level (using the Internet to teach yourself new and marketable skills, taking classes to learn new things, switching careers, etc) then you're not a victim of the evil gentrifiers. You're a victim of your own inability to adapt to a changing market. The same thing happened to Seattle, Redmond, and Bellevue in the 80s when Microsoft moved in, and it will happen when the next big tech company comes into Seattle. The city survived then, the city thrives now, and the city will continue to expand and grow to become the next economic powerhouse of the nation in the future. Embrace it and be a part of something great!