If you could afford a $200,000 home in 1995, you deserve it to be worth $600,000 now. That's pretty standard growth for the cost of homes in California. Coming from Texas or Montana you might not understand, but the reality in California is that you'll get paid a lot more to work here as well and there are higher paying opportunities of higher specialized more powerful jobs. Flipping burgers is paid higher in Cali as well, but it doesn't scale equally, and so those jobs are held by people with roommates/parents/extended-family to live with.
Expensive areas are selecting for innovative, harder working, modern people. Of course they get the trustafarians as well --- but you can't act like people who did a little high paying hard work in the city and retire like a king in Montana aren't doing something similar; the difference being that the trustafarians generally accomplish little with their lives. It's also similar to taking modest earnings from american mediocrity in the US and expatriating to south america to live really well.
People who didn't intend to grow, but did invest in home ownership (pay property taxes), believing in the area, are going to be doing very well. They'll probably even reap the benefits of renting and retire somewhere cheaper. That's what smart people from 20 years ago would have done if they didn't intend on evolving.
People who do intend on keeping up with the times, innovate, study new things and try to be near the cutting edge of productivity, they'll also do well. They'll be what businesses consider desirable because they can contribute new things. This probably sounds pompous, but a plumber is still just a plumber. A plumber who has developed robots to do his job will probably be ahead of the times and take over major parts of the market. See the trend? Car mechanics that work on hybrids and develop battery upgrade work for low cost are going to supplant old mechanics that only work on carbourated old american muscle.
What we are seeing is a natural product of what we should expect to happen. These big innovation/economic centers necessitate people who either invest/own, or lead the way.
Look around the city from a different set of eyes. Try to recognize the economy, productivity, and cultural shift. What are the people being 'pushed out' doing that says they should keep their spot? They have always lived there and so they deserve to stay? If that's the case, why didn't they buy when the market was low and the risks for 'investment' would only benefit people who never want to sell or leave? Right now they'd be doing really well, actually. But those being pushed out are renters. They don't put down a 30 year commitment. That aversion to risk is beneficial in some ways as well, but long-term staying without being cutting edge won't be one of those benefits.