On a quiet street in San Francisco’s Mission District, a modest apartment that once rented for $500 a month holds special meaning for Saikat Chakrabarti.

It was here, he says, that he first felt he had found a place to call home.

“This is really where I fell in love with today, like when I moved in here, I was like, alright, there’s where I’m living for the rest of my life,” Chakrabarti told CBS News Bay Area.

Chakrabarti grew up in Texas, the son of immigrants from Bangladesh. He says his father came to the United States believing deeply in the opportunities the country could provide.

“He saw that visa as a lottery ticket, right?” Chakrabarti said. “Like he saw that as this massive opportunity that he got.”

When he arrived in San Francisco in the late 2000s, he says the city carried that same sense of possibility. At the time, living in the city still felt attainable.

“I paid $500 a month here, and then literally, two years later, my friends were looking for apartments in San Francisco,” Chakrabarti said. “We’re looking at similar places for like, $1,500 a month, right? So this city, like, gave me so much it gave me so much opportunity, but I could see it like, literally in front of my eyes, becoming more and more out of reach for especially working people, and, like, that life that I had, that San Francisco gave me, that’s not possible anymore.”

The changes were unfolding quickly. Chakrabarti entered the tech industry as an early engineer at the rapidly growing startup Stripe, but he says the same economic boom that created opportunity also pushed many residents out.

“We have an economy where either you win the lottery and you have it all, or you’re never going to be able to own a home in San Francisco or have a secure retirement,” he said. “That, to me, is fundamentally broken. That was a radicalizing experience for me, and so that’s one of the big reasons I quit.”

Chakrabarti eventually left the tech world and moved into progressive politics. He joined Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and later served as chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

Back in San Francisco, he spends time in neighborhoods like the Lower Haight, where he says he built a family and a sense of community.

“This is home. You know, this whole neighborhood is home,” he said.

Now Chakrabarti is hoping to shape the city’s future. He is running to replace longtime Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, arguing that San Francisco needs a new generation of leadership.

“I think the problems that we face today, the crises we face today, are certainly different than the ones we faced back in the 1980s when Speaker Pelosi first came into Congress, and I do think it needs new ideas, new people, a new generation of leadership, and that’s what I’m offering her,” he said.

For Chakrabarti, the campaign is about preserving the opportunities that once made San Francisco feel like home, and ensuring others can find that same chance.

“It’s being a father. It’s being a San Franciscan. It’s being someone who’s always been driven by wanting to help those around me, however I can, and specifically wanting to help fix the system that’s broken around me, that, you know, allowed me to get so much, and why shouldn’t I be shared with others.”

This story is part of “Behind the Ballot,” a series introducing voters to the people behind the campaigns in the race for California’s 11th Congressional District.