Is there any way to force blocks created by views to display even when there is no result?
Views has a somewhat hidden feature for setting the behavior when you have no results.

If you edit the view and click on Advanced, you will see some new settings:



Click on add next to NO RESULTS BEHAVIOR.  You will then get a modal with a ton of choices.  You should be able to use the textarea or markup options to plop in a &amp;nbsp;  This should force the block to not be "empty".  You could also set a message, etc.

You can also always show the advanced options if you visit admin/structure/views/settings

I typically always set "Always show the master display" and "Always show advanced display settings".  There are some other useful settings on admin/structure/views/settings/advanced